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The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election

Inside Yet Another Trump Victory Party

After wrapping up unopposed primary victories in California and New Jersey, Donald Trump announced that he was feeling great and would launch a major new attack on the Clintons "possibly on Monday."

Donald Trump in Westchester County after winning more primaries on Tuesday. Photo by Monica Jorge/Sipa USA via AP

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. Again. The #NeverTrump hopes that Ted Cruz would still be competitive by the time of the California primary have long since been squashed, as have the dreams of a contested convention. The Republican Party lost to Trump; now, for all intents and purposes, Trump is the Republican Party.

There were still primaries to be held in California, New Jersey, and a handful of Western states, but they were beside the point. The only show in town was at the Trump National Golf Club in New York's Westchester County, where reporters and fans in red "Make America Great Again" hats listened to the real estate mogul once again talk about how great he was.

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"Tonight, we close one chapter in history, and we begin another," Trump told the crowd. "Our campaign received more primary votes than any GOP campaign in history. No matter who it is, no matter who they are, we received more votes. This is a great feeling. That's a great feeling."

But even as he all-but-officially won the GOP nomination (it won't be official official until the convention), Trump once again found himself trying to convince the Republican Party to accept him as its leader. He took the stage amid a self-inflicted shit storm, and a resurgent #NeverTrump movement that seems to have found its legs again in the wake of the candidate's alarmingly racist remarks about the federal judge presiding over one of fraud the lawsuits against Trump University.

Just hours before, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham was instructing all Republicans who endorsed the presidential candidate to go back on their word. Mark Kirk, a Republican senator from Illinois in the midst of a tight reelection battle, rescinded his support, calling Trump's remarks "dead wrong" and "un-American."

Trump seemed unconcerned about all the infighting and negative stories about his campaign, and made his entrance to Queen's "We Are the Champions," smiling, waving, surrounded by his family and low-hanging chandeliers. The backdrop itself was a slight change of scenery for the campaign, which has held most of its primary night question-free "press conferences" at Trump's more ostentatious Florida clubs, or his Midtown Manhattan palace, Trump Tower.

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However, his speech, in which he outlined his "America First" platform, was exactly what the Establishment had wanted from their candidate. It was policy-driven—or at least had some shred of coherency—but also heavy on the Hillary hate. Just the fact that Trump read it from teleprompters rather than ad-libbing was perhaps the sign of a pivot to maturity his party is begging him for.

"On foreign policy, we will never enter into any conflict unless it makes us safer as a nation. It has to make us safer as a nation," Trump told supporters. "This is the opposite of Hillary's foreign policy, which invaded Libya, destabilized Iraq, unleashed ISIS, and threw Syria into chaos, and created the mass migration, which is wreaking havoc all over the world."

He then promised to protect workers against competition from China and Mexico, harped on broken deals, and brought forth a vision of an America that was nearing total collapse: "Our infrastructure is a disaster. Our schools are failing. Crime is rising. People are scared.

"The beauty of America first is that it brings us all together," he added later. "Every American worker of every background is entitled to the same benefits, protections, and rights and privileges. It's got to be that way."

Trump even made noises indicating that he'd be trying to expand his heretofore white and male base. "We're going to take care of our African Americans, who have suffered so much," he told the basically all-white room on Tuesday night.

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He also made a crude appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters, many of whom may be feeling angry and ripped off after their candidate's loss to the Establishment-backed Hillary Clinton. "To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms," Trump declared.

"Why would politicians want to change a system that's totally rigged in order to keep them in power?" he later asked, sounding unusually Sanders-like. "Why would they want to change a system that's made them and their friends very, very wealthy?"

He then tried—somewhat clumsily—to tie that "rigged" system to the Clintons—with lines like, "The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form itself." He promised to hold a press conference devoted entirely to the Clintons, "possibly on Monday."

The GOP may be divided by Trump's victory, but hatred of the Clintons can bring Republicans together. Attacking Clinton will distract people from whatever heinous stuff Trump has said, while also reminding Republicans unenthusiastic about the angry orange man why they should back him anyway. It also plays to Trump's strengths—does anyone think he'll be well-versed in policy by the time of the election.

The scene on Tuesday night was a taste of what the country will be in for over the next five months, as Trump and Clinton drag each other toward November. Soon after Trump exited the stage to raucous applause, someone at the golf club turned up the volume on the surrounding TV screens, blaring Megyn Kelly of Fox News, who was asking a focus group of San Diego Democrats and Republicans what they made of Tuesday's primary results.

As the conversation rapidly descended into a shouting match about lying and racism, Trump's words from earlier in the night sprang to mind: "We're only getting started, and it's going to be beautiful."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.