New York Times:

Donald J. Trump warned of “riots” around the Republican National Convention should he fall slightly short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination and the party moves to select another candidate. …

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.”

He added: “If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

How much more of a clue to the character of the real Trump do people need?

He’s already telling us that the principle of a majority vote and the usual rules of political party nominating conventions should be set aside, just for him, or else. Not that he’s threatening anyone…

Obviously, it takes a majority vote, not a plurality, not a number of votes some hundreds short of a majority, to win the nomination. That’s how conventions work. And, the tradition has been that candidates who win a plurality, but who cannot get a majority, generally find their votes deserting them and going elsewhere on later ballots. That is precisely how the process has worked historically and the way it is supposed to work.

And, Donald and all the Trumpkins out there, this is a country of laws and we have plenty of police. Try rioting and America will throw your ass in the cooler. This isn’t Weimar Germany or some Latin American banana republic, and our political decisions are not influenced by threats of violence.