--- title: Donald Trump Warns of 'Riots' if He's Blocked at Convention description: "I think bad things would happen, I really do" canonical: https://time.com/4261087/donald-trump-riots-republican-convention/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-16T15:04:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T15:57:01.672Z article:section: Politics og:title: Donald Trump Warns of 'Riots' if He's Blocked at Convention og:description: "I think bad things would happen, I really do" og:url: https://time.com/4261087/donald-trump-riots-republican-convention/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta48b50f7feaa8ada/69888b2dbc6cfc73363dc2a6/donald-trump1.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Election Night News Conference og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Donald Trump Warns of 'Riots' if He's Blocked at Convention twitter:description: "I think bad things would happen, I really do" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta48b50f7feaa8ada/69888b2dbc6cfc73363dc2a6/donald-trump1.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Donald Trump Warns of 'Riots' if He's Blocked at Convention by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Mar 16, 2016 3:04 PM UTC  Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, arrives to speak during a news conference at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., on Tuesday, March 15, 2016. Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, arrives to speak during a news conference at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., on Tuesday, March 15, 2016.Andrew Harrer—Bloomberg/Getty Images by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Mar 16, 2016 3:04 PM UTC If Donald Trump does not get the 1,237 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination in the first vote at the Republican Convention, and if the party works to block him in subsequent votes, he [says](http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/16/donald-trump-warns-of-riots-if-party-blocks-him-at-convention/) he believes “riots” could break out. “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 in a Wednesday interview on CNN’s _New Day_. “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.” “If you disenfranchise those people,” he said, “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.” Even though violence has indeed occurred at Trump rallies recently, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer [responded](http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/rnc-spokesman-trump-riots-response-220858) to the riot warning, “I assume he’s speaking figuratively … If we get to a point where there needs to be more than one ballot, we’ll do it in a very orderly and transparent way.” \[[NYT](http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/16/donald-trump-warns-of-riots-if-party-blocks-him-at-convention/)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4261087/donald-trump-riots-republican-convention/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4261087/donald-trump-riots-republican-convention/"},"headline":"Donald Trump Warns of 'Riots' if He's Blocked at Convention","datePublished":"2016-03-16T15:04:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T15:57:01.672Z","description":"\"I think bad things would happen, I really do\"","url":"https://time.com/4261087/donald-trump-riots-republican-convention/","keywords":["2016 Election","2016 Election topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta48b50f7feaa8ada/69888b2dbc6cfc73363dc2a6/donald-trump1.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta48b50f7feaa8ada/69888b2dbc6cfc73363dc2a6/donald-trump1.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Election Night News Conference","caption":"Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Election Night News Conference","creditText":"Andrew Harrer—Bloomberg/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/2016-election/","name":"2016 Election"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4261087/donald-trump-riots-republican-convention/","name":"Donald Trump Warns of 'Riots' if He's Blocked at Convention"}}]}] ```