The Republican Party is "pretty much in the third stage of grief" over the possibility of Donald Trump being the presidential nominee, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Judith Miller told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"I think they've given up the ghost," she told "The Steve Malzberg Show" in an interview.
A former investigative reporter for The New York Times, Miller's latest book,
"The Story: A Reporter's Journey," was released last week in paperback.
"People now understand that it's going to be very hard to deny him the nomination because of his enormous showing — especially here in the Acela primaries," Miller said, referring to the contests Trump swept in five Northeastern states on Tuesday.
"He just blew everybody away. He won every category — including women, which shocked me, moderates, every age category.
"How do you say after a showing like this: 'Let's say he's 100 votes shorter or less than that, no, I know our rules say we don't have to give it to you?' " the Fox News commentator posed. "I don't think there's enough left of the Republican establishment and the Republican Party to deny him the nomination."
Watch Newsmax TV on
DirecTV Ch. 349, DISH Ch. 223 and
Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —
Click Here Now
Miller slammed Ted Cruz — he "was so disliked in the Senate" — and his "bizarre" choice of Carly Fiorina as a running mate should he win the nomination.
Former House Speaker John Boehner's harsh attack Thursday on Cruz "reflects what we all knew and had forgotten about as Cruz became the acceptable alternative to Donald Trump for the Republican establishment," Miller began to Malzberg.
"Cruz was so disliked in the Senate and Boehner was a charter member of that club. You could just see the politicians hated Cruz for reasons … that still have yet to be fully reported.
"What I'm hearing is that he was not a man of his word," Miller offered. "That you thought you have made a deal with Ted Cruz and then he would back away and do his own thing or stab you in the back.
"That's why you get someone like John McCain, who does not speak ill of fellow Republicans. He abides by the Reagan rule — and, yet, he's made an exception for Ted Cruz.
"You see a lot of ill towards the man," Miller said.
The Texas senator's selection of Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who quit her own failing campaign for the nomination two months ago, only raised questions, she told Malzberg.
"What was he doing? What was he thinking? He was going to get her one delegate? What does she bring to this?
"It was so bizarre — and it came across to most reporters covering the campaign as an act of desperation," Miller said.
But Fiorina's singing to Cruz's two young daughters — a lullaby she created based on the Irving Berlin classic "You're Just in Love" from 1950 — during Wednesday's press conference was "a moment that is going to reverberate from now until forever," she said.
"There's just things you don't do as a candidate," Miller added. "Unless you're Maria Callas or somebody like that, you don't sing unless you sing so badly that you can make fun of yourself."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.