The Trump campaign is endeavoring to transform the Republican National Convention into what campaign advisers call a “four-day television commercial” by helping state Republican parties change their primary rules in favor of President Donald Trump.
During a conference call with the press on Monday, unnamed campaign staffers told reporters that the campaign has been spending months working with state GOP organizations to change their primary and delegate systems to weed out Trump’s Republican opponents by the time the convention rolls around next summer.
The staffers denied the effort was to silence intra-party dissent against Trump, insisting that they’re merely trying to make the candidate selection process more “efficient.”
“The rules of the party now reflect adequately that the will of the voters in the president’s party,” one of the staffers said, according to Reuters. “This is not being done from a position of weakness.”
“What this is about is ensuring the President is in the best position possible to win the general election, and we do that by making sure Charlotte is a four-day television commercial for 300 million Americans and not an internal debate among a few thousand activists,” the campaign said, according to HuffPost.
Multiple states Republican parties have either altered the rules of their primaries or cancelled them altogether.
