Trump Convinces Sheldon to Sit Out Early Primaries

Donald Trump’s courting of Sheldon Adelson may have paid off way faster than Marco Rubio’s weekly phone calls, it seems.

On Thursday, speaking to reporters, the Vegas casino mogul said he might sit out and wait until some of the early primary states determine who’re the favorites to win the GOP nomination before deciding to back a specific candidate.

“The Adelson family has not made up its mind as to anybody we are going to support,” he said during a press conference attending to announce the opening of a St. Regis hotel by Sands China Ltd. “We may just wait until a number of the primaries already established and who’s garnering the largest number of delegates.”

“We like a lot of the candidates, some more than the others,” Adelson explained. “It’s changing every day. I saw in the news today that Trump said his percentage approval was 41 percent. Out of 14 candidates, 41 percent is unheard of.”

On Tuesday, hours before the Republican presidential candidates faced off in the 5th televised debate in Vegas, Trump met with Adelson in private. “It was very nice,” Adelson told Reuters about his meeting with the Republican presidential frontrunner. “He was very charming… [Trump] had talked about potentially dividing about Jerusalem and Israel, so I talked about Israel because with our newspaper, my wife being Israeli, we are the few who know more about Israel than people who don’t.”

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are considered the favorites to win the coveted Adelson endorsement. But it seems that Trump, as a successful deal-maker, managed to delay the ‘Adelson Primary’ outcome and earn another two months of the spotlight without facing a barrage of negative attacks by his rivals bring him down before voters get to prove or debunk his frontrunner states.