MCKEES ROCKS, PA — (CNN) John Kasich said Monday he’s not the desperate one on the campaign trail. Donald Trump is.
“The Trump people are very desperate. They’re very fearful that we’re going to end up in an open convention,” Kasich told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “We’ll get the convention and the delegates will look at who they would like to see as president.”
Kasich was pushing back on criticism from Donald Trump on Monday over the deal the Ohio governor struck with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, which Trump said reeked of “desperation.” Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Trump supporter, also referred to the move as “desperate measures.”
Kasich and Cruz on Sunday night unveiled a plan in which they would not compete with one another in three of the remaining states, part of a last-ditch plan to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs for a first-ballot clinch at the GOP convention in Cleveland.
The deal, unveiled in press releases late Sunday night and discussed at rallies and TV appearances all day Monday, has already seen its bumps.
Trump blasted it as “collusion.” Kasich said he isn’t asking people not to vote for him in Indiana. And pro-Cruz super PACs aren’t pulling their anti-Kasich ads.
Both campaigns scrambled to change schedules — Kasich planned to campaign in Indiana all day Tuesday — and ratchet back their operations. Just one night prior to the announcement, over 200 unknowing Cruz volunteers were enjoying a party in Salem to launch their statewide operation — one that would become effectively defunct 24 hours later.”
Aides in both campaigns struggled to lay out exactly what their new normal looked like as they get their heads around the fact they’re, for all intents and purposes, in cahoots with a competitor. And more may be on the way. A Kasich adviser said conversations about how to split up the all-important congressional districts in California’s June 7 primary are in the works.
But the arrangement, while perhaps politically and tactically necessary (helps both save money and resources, for one thing), feeds quite nicely into the narrative that Trump, the GOP front-runner and target of the alliance, has built around the Republican party’s delegate system.
“Collusion” was the word Trump repeatedly tossed out throughout his three-event day on the campaign trail.
The public nature of the announcement was problematic enough, one Cruz adviser acknowledged, yet it was crucial for a major reason: it was the only way outside groups supporting the two candidates would know to shift their attacks.
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