US President Barack Obama has urged the US media and American public to examine the “long record” of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and not get distracted by the “spectacle and the circus” aspect of the 2016 election campaign. Mitt Romney, who won the Republican nomination in 2012, is also refusing to support Trump. Clinton has said she did not send or receive information marked as classified.
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Trump’s advisers have begun conversations with the Republican National Committee on coordinating fundraising and tapping the committee’s extensive voter data file and nationwide get-out-the-vote operation.
“Paul Ryan said that I inherited something very special, the Republican Party”, he continued in another.
Trump emerged as the last man standing in the Republican presidential race with a vow to disrupt the old order in Republican Party politics but is finding that in some respects, he needs the old order.
A fractured Republican party showed few signs of mending itself Friday, after Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared his support for Donald Trump and Trump bashed House Speaker Paul Ryan for not falling in line.
At the same time, Priebus appeared to relish the fact that the very qualities that have made Trump so controversial-his blunt criticisms and willingness to brutally attack-could make him a formidable general election opponent.
“So many people are saying, ‘I’ve chose to turn it down.’ They were never on the list”, he told Fox. “I’m just glad we’re having the convention in Cleveland, not Area 51”, he said. “His vision that he laid out is not something in question”. This guy goes on television and talks about ‘I know more about the military than Trump. “You already see the polls going up rapidly”.
In addition to changing tone, Trump also faces an uphill climb to bring the party together.
Even in an election season that has exposed extreme and public divisions within the GOP, Ryan’s decision to withhold his support from Trump was extraordinary.
Trump took issue with Ryan.
When asked about backing Trump, Ryan told CNN on Thursday: “I’m not there right now”, although he said he hoped to be eventually. It’s hard to believe I win everything in a landslide. Ryan, concerned not the least with retaining Republican majorities in Congress, said he still wondered whether Trump would espouse conservative principles of limited government, and the two agreed to meet next week in Washington.
A federal judge ordered the trial in San Diego to start on Nov 28, which means he will not have to testify while he campaigns.
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The endorsements Trump did win – Indiana Governor Mike Pence, former Texas Governor Rick Perry – also included former Vice President Dick Cheney, exactly the type of name so toxic in some quarters that Democrats are certain to scramble to tie him to Trump.
