Donald Trump Plays Defense While Crossing The Finish Line

• Donald Trump assured Republicans on Sunday that he has a short list of SCOTUS nominees if he wins the election.
• This is a bid to calm his supporter's fears after it came out that a group of prominent conservatives are looking for an independent to run against Trump in the general election should he win the party nomination. 
• He went on to defend his rallies as non-violent and stated that the blame should lie with the protesters.
• Trump also offered up criticisms for Obama's visit to Cuba.

Donald Trump tried to assure a room of Palm Beach County Republicans on Sunday that his conservative credentials were real – and that the party should unite behind him for the nomination, especially with a Supreme Court seat at stake.

To further prove that, the Republican front-runner told the crowd that he would submit a list of between five and ten judges that he would appoint to the high court, which currently has a vacancy due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative stalwart.

His remarks came a day after a New York Times report indicated that a group of prominent conservatives were looking, should Trump win the nomination, to find a candidate that would run against him in the general election. Trump has previously said that he would consider Judge William Pryor and Judge Diane Sykes, two well-known conservative jurists, as Scalia's replacement.

“So I'm going to get a list of anywhere from five to 10 judges, and those are going to be the judges that I'm going to put in, it will be one of those judges, and I will guarantee it personally, like we do in the world of business, which we don't like to do too often,” Trump said. “But I will guarantee it that those are going to be the first judges that I put up for nomination if I win. And that should solve that problem, and I think that's a good idea, right?”

Trump has also said for weeks that he would release a team of foreign policy advisors. He has yet to do so.

He also forcefully defended his campaign from accusations that his rhetoric is partially responsible for the escalating incidents of violence at his rallies. But Trump had nothing but praise for an African-American rally attendee that attacked a protester being escorted out of his rally in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday.

The protester was wearing an American flag shirt and holding an anti-Trump sign. His companion was wearing a white mask commonly associated with the Ku Klux Klan. It was just the latest in a string of incidents in which an altercation with a protester has turned physical at Trump's rallies.

Trump said he understood the attendee who attacked the protester to be “a very fine guy” and called him “wonderful.”

The settling for the businessman's latest eyebrow-raising defense was in many ways a home court advantage: Trump spoke in front of the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, hosting its annual Lincoln Day Dinner at Mar-a-Lago – his private club.

“Again, I say it for everybody, especially for the media, we don't condone violence,” Trump said. “Why didn't they show that? So in the morning you saw the Klan, you saw it….All it showed was this wonderful, because I hear he's a very fine guy, this wonderful African American man, swinging, swinging, swinging, and nobody knows why he did it.”

Trump repeated the claim that nobody had been hurt at his events, in spite of multiple instances – captured on video – of protesters at Trump rallies being physically accosted. Trump, instead, laid blame at the feet of those that disrupt his rallies.

“What about all the people that are using horrible profanity, horrible words?” Trump said. “Why are they never the bad people? It's an incredible thing. And even the way they covered – they showed the cars blocking the road, but they covered these people like they're wonderful revolutionaries, okay?”

Trump was referring to a group of demonstrators that blocked the roadway entering Trump's first Arizona event on Saturday in Fountain Hills.

“I just want to explain: there's very, very little violence,” at his rallies, Trump said. “But it's very unfair to the people that support the people in this room. The people that support us, and us, we're not getting fair treatment. Because it's not our fault, remember that, okay?”

Also in attendance tonight was the latest high profile endorsement for Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, who was, at one point, Trump's rival for the Republican nomination.

“I said we didn't make a deal,” Trump said. “He can do whatever he wants to do. He's going to pick something, or probably a few things, knowing Ben. And we're going to have him totally involved.”

Carson had implied, in an interview with a conservative news service last week, that endorsing Trump wasn't his top choice, and further went on to suggest that Trump had promised him a role in his administration.

Trump also criticized President Obama historic trip to Cuba this week. He said he would have made a different deal toward normalizing relations with the communist state – one that protected the United States from litigation.

“So I found this to be amazing because I'm okay with the Cuba situation,” Trump said. “But I want to tell you, they should be making a good deal. For instance, I hear Cuba wants to sue us for hundreds of billions of dollars for all the harm we've caused them. That's okay. When you make your deal, you get rid of that. Right? You say, okay, we'll do some – but you gotta get that clause out. Boom.”

After Trump finished speaking, he and Carson stood on stage bobbing and weaving as a singer named Beau Davidson serenaded the two to a parody of Ben E. King's “Stand By Me” with pro-Trump lyrics. Cameras snapped and the crowd laughed.

And while it wasn't quite as surreal Trump dancing to Drake's “Hotline Bling” on Saturday Night Live, he still looked very much in his element.

By SOPAN DEB, CBS News