Monday’s chaotic floor fight over the Republican National Convention’s rules package could come back to bite both the Donald Trump and the GOP establishment on Tuesday evening.
The convention is set to resume at 5:30 p.m. EDT with a prime-time schedule that will include the Roll Call of States, which would presumably be the moment Trump officially secures his party’s nomination. But, there were a lot of delegates who were still angry and bitter about the outcome of Monday afternoon’s vote on party rules.
And the latest bit of news isn’t going to make them feel much better about it.
According to a report Tuesday morning from The Blaze, talking points sent out by the RNC said the grassroots “rebels”—free-the-delegate advocates—never had enough widespread support for their resolution to force a roll-call vote. An emailed memo sent by an RNC staffer to the RNC’s communications staff suggested some of the signatures collected by anti-Trump delegates were gathered under false pretenses.
“People were misled at breakfasts this morning,” it stated. “They just asked people to sign a piece of paper not knowing what it was. When they found out what it was, they took themselves out of it.”
The memo also asserted that while the group claimed to have the support of nine or 10 states, they only received support from six state delegate majorities—seven were required to force a vote. Among the states that had delegates withdraw their support were Iowa, Maine, and Minnesota, as well as the District of Columbia.
Alaska was rumored to have supported the effort, but according to the memo, its delegation never submitted a petition.
Thwarted in their efforts to revise party rules, will these delegates attempt to retaliate Tuesday evening during the Roll Call? While the votes are already bound for the first ballot, that doesn’t mean one state or more might not try to make a statement when they have a live microphone in their hands.
States to watch would include Colorado, Utah, Virginia, and Washington, whose delegations’ leaders were major players in the roll-call vote effort.
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