2 Trump children miss voter registration deadline, can’t vote for Dad in NY primary

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate Donald Trump says two of his children feel guilty about missing a voter registration deadline, meaning they will not be able to vote for him next week in New York’s Republican primary.

Eric Trump, 32, and Ivanka Trump, 34, the Republican front-runner’s second and third children, have campaigned extensively with their father, but both missed the deadline for registering as Republicans to vote in the New York primary on April 19.

In a telephone interview with “Fox & Friends,” Trump joked that he would have to find some way to punish Eric and Ivanka for their mistake.

“No more allowance!” the New York billionaire said with a laugh.

For already registered voters, any request to switch party affiliation must have been made by early October. The deadline for new voter registrations was March 25.

“They were unaware of the rules,” Trump said Monday on Fox News. “They feel very, very guilty.

“But it’s fine. I mean, I understand that.”

Records from the New York State Board of Elections show both Eric and Ivanka are registered voters who are “not enrolled in a party,” ABC News reported.

Like their father, they have made political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, Federal Election Commission records show.

Trump’s oldest child, Donald Jr., 38, already was registered Republican. The registration status of his other voting-age child, Tiffany, was not immediately known.

Trump’s comments on Monday brought swift rebukes on Twitter from critics who said the Trump children’s lapse bolsters doubts about whether Trump is a true Republican. Trump previously supported abortion rights and has donated to Democrats, including his now-rival Hillary Clinton.

“I for one am shocked as the whole family really seem like lifelong conservatives,” user Awen Lake (@AwenLake) posted on Twitter, adding the hashtag #reallydemocrat.

“This is so funny. I always knew he was a liberal,” a user named Allen (@alb309O) wrote. “He has his supporters bamboozled.”

Trump: Fight for delegates ‘corrupt, crooked’

Trump is blasting the way the country chooses presidential party nominees as “corrupt” and “crooked” as he grapples with the potential of a contested convention that he risks losing.

Speaking to thousands packed in a frigid airport hangar in western New York on Sunday, Trump ripped the byzantine fight over delegates at the heart of his party’s nominating process. He argued anew that the person who wins the most votes in the primary process should automatically be the GOP nominee.

“What they’re trying to do is subvert the movement with crooked shenanigans,” said Trump, comparing his woes to those of Bernie Sanders, who is winning states but still far behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the race for delegates that decide party nominations.

“We should have won it a long time ago,” Trump said. “But, you know, we keep losing where we’re winning.”

Trump was coming to terms with the political reality of candidates chasing delegates ahead of their nominating convention, and now he’s shifting his focus to developing a strategy akin to the one rival Ted Cruz has been pursuing for months.

“A more traditional approach is needed and Donald Trump recognizes that,” Paul Manafort, Trump’s new delegate chief, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

At his rally in Rochester, Trump repeatedly insisted his campaign was “doing fine” and predicted he would clinch the nomination before the summer convention.

Elsewhere, Trump continued to try to catch up to Cruz’s ground operation, which is months ahead in some states when it comes to securing friendly delegates. Cruz is trying to eat into Trump’s home-state support in conservative pockets of New York.

Manafort said the Cruz campaign was using a “scorched earth” approach in which “they don’t care about the party. If they don’t get what they want, they blow it up.”

Last weekend, Cruz completed his sweep of Colorado’s 34 delegates by locking up the remaining 13 at the party’s state convention in Colorado Springs. He already had collected 21 delegates and visited the state to try to pad his numbers there.

Trump still has a narrow path to nailing down the Republican nomination by the end of the primaries on June 7, but he has little room for error. He would need to win nearly 60 percent of all the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before the convention. So far, he’s winning about 45 percent.

Following Cruz’s sweep of Colorado’s remaining delegates on Saturday, the Associated Press count stands at Trump 743, Cruz 545, and John Kasich 143. Marco Rubio, who ended his campaign, has 171 delegates.