April 30--REPORTING FROM BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Undeterred by protesters who nearly blocked his way into a California Republican convention, Donald Trump called on the party Friday to unite behind him even as he lashed out at what he portrayed as its corrupt system for picking presidential nominees.
Police in riot gear were unable to stop egg-tossing demonstrators who broke through street barricades and rushed to the entrance of the convention hotel near San Francisco International Airport, forcing Trump's motorcade to pull over on the shoulder of the 101 Freeway.
Surrounded by Secret Service agents, the New York developer hopped a concrete barrier and entered the hotel through a back door.
"It felt like I was crossing the border," Trump joked to hundreds of Republicans at a lunch banquet. The crowd laughed.
Trump, whose vow to stop illegal immigration should appeal to many voters in California's June 7 GOP primary, was subdued in his remarks to the state party's rank and file, a sharp contrast to his fiery performance at a rally Thursday night in Costa Mesa.
The convention crowd applauded politely, but it was a tense embrace as Trump charged that GOP candidates must bribe the party's delegates -- a number of whom were in the audience -- to win its White House nomination.
"It's a horrible, horrible, disgusting system," he said.
Trump told the crowd he'd finally won more than 1,000 of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination before the Cleveland GOP convention in July. According to the Associated Press, Trump's tally Friday afternoon was 996, but his point was to urge Republican activists to accept him as their presumptive nominee.
"I think it's going to come to an end very soon," said Trump, who hopes to crush rival Ted Cruz by winning the Indiana primary on Tuesday. "And really, I'm speaking to the people in this room, because there has to be unity in our party."
Still, Trump insulted party luminaries who have criticized him, including Karl Rove, the top political advisor to former President George W. Bush. "Is he the dumbest human being on earth?" Trump asked.
"You've got to go a different way, folks, because these people are leading you right into the middle of a very bad, bad desert -- and we're going to win," he said. Ideally, he added, "We're going to be together."
Before his arrival, a cluster of protesters unfurled a giant yellow "Stop hate" banner that covered most of the window of the hotel's nine-story glass atrium. Another group draped a "Dump Trump" banner from a bridge between the hotel and a parking lot.
As the protest raged outside, with a huge Mexican flag waving in the middle of the crowd, Trump sneaked in and attended a VIP reception, where he posed for photos with Republican donors next to the U.S. and California flags.
michael.finnegan@latimes.com
Twitter: @finneganLAT
Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Javier Panzar contributed to this story.
