WASHINGTON: Once a remote outsider, billionaire Donald Trump on Thursday reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for president.

Earlier on Thursday, President Barack Obama said world leaders were “surprised” that Mr Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee and this possibility “rattled” them.

Mr Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton received another jolt on Wednesday when a State Department report concluded that the former secretary of state violated the official policy by using a private email account for official business.

The report, however, noted that other former secretaries also had used private email accounts for official purposes and that doing so was not a crime.

Mrs Clinton was leading Mr Trump by up to 20 points in most opinion polls until last week when the trend began to change. Some polls gave Mr Trump a slight lead while others said it was a tie.

On Thursday, the Associated Press issued a delegate count, which showed Mr Trump had reached the number needed to clinch party nomination.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination. Mr Trump has reached 1,238, AP reported.

With 303 delegates at stake in five state primaries on June 7, Mr Trump will easily pad his total, avoiding a contested convention in Cleveland, the news agency predicted.

Mr Trump, a political novice who never ran for an office before, fought off 16 other Republican contenders in a long and ugly primary race.

But he is still facing stiff resistance from the Republican Party establishment.

House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan, also a Republican, this week backed away from an earlier pledge to support whoever becomes the nominee. Now he saying he’s “not ready” to endorse Mr Trump as the Republican presidential candidate.

Other Republican heavyweights, including the Bushes, are also refusing to endorse him.

But Mr Trump, despised by the party establishment for his rhetoric, seems popular among millions of Americans who admire him for saying what other don’t. Mr Trump has suggested building a wall along the Mexican border or banning Muslims from entering the United States. He also asked North Korea’s neighbors to nuke it and suggested degrading US close ties with Britain because British leaders criticised him.

During a press conference in Japan, President Obama said the entire world was watching American presidential election “very” and rightly so because Mr Trump’s statements make them nervous.

“They are not sure how seriously to take some of his pronouncements but they’re rattled by him — and for good reason, because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude,” he said.

President Obama said that Mr Trump’s controversial proposals were more about “getting tweets and headlines” than “actually thinking through” what’s needed to keep America safe or the “world on an even keel.”

But Mr Obama hoped that the situation would change after the primaries.

“Politics doesn’t express all the goodness of the people. But usually, eventually, the voters make good decisions, and democracy works,” he said. “So I’m optimistic that we’ll get through this period.”

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2016