Either John Kasich or Ted Cruz could win the presidency in November, but Donald Trump will "go down in flames," and if Trump doesn't have the 1,237 votes he needs to clinch the GOP nomination at the party's convention this summer, the delegates "should look elsewhere," former New York Gov. George Pataki said Monday.
"I think the key is to stop Donald Trump, to not let him become the nominee before the convention," Pataki, who announced his endorsement for Kasich last week, told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
"At the convention, the delegates are free to look at who they want."
And in New York, where voters will hit the polls on Tuesday, Pataki said that there is a chance that Trump will win the state while losing delegates in several districts.
"It's really 27 different primaries," Pataki told the program. "Trump is going to win the state, but he could lose a number of those districts and fail to hit 50 percent of those in more than half of those districts, and then a lot of the delegates would go to Kasich."
Meanwhile, author and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, also on the segment with Pataki, commented that she believes Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, is "once again disbelieving what's happening" in her primary elections.
"In 2008, at least, there was this young, elegant black man who is a real orator, and now she's losing a lot of her natural constituency to a 74-year-old white man who sounds like a staff sergeant in terms of his oratory," Huffington said of Clinton's race against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Meanwhile, Pataki, who dropped his own bid for the nomination in December, served for three terms in New York, while Kasich, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Scott Walker have not been able to gain traction as presidential candidates, and Pataki said he believe that's because people are looking for change.
"They don't trust people who have been in the political process, which is why you have Donald Trump and why you have Bernie Sanders," said Pataki. "I mean, yes, he's been a senator, but a flake on the outside. He hasn't been perceived as an insider. It's that simple."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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