Trump has exposed deepening party divisions by refusing to endorse GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan’s re-election and continuing to criticize the family of a slain USA soldier. But Comella, his former aide, said the very survival of the party depends on stopping the celebrity businessman.
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“He feels like a fool”, a Republican source familiar with the situation said of Priebus.
“This would be the end of any other Republican candidate in the history of the country”.
“He’s a longtime friend, he’s a strong conservative leader”.
Ahead of last month’s Republican Party Convention, the RNC chairman sought to rally the fractured party behind Trump.
The reverberations from Trump’s decision to go rogue on his own party ripped through the political world Wednesday morning.
It is the latest rift in a party already frayed by internal dissent over its standard bearer, seen in stark relief at the convention where McCain was among high-level party members who essentially snubbed Trump by choosing not to attend.
The Republican presidential nominee told The Washington Post he’s “just not quite there yet”, when asked about an endorsement of Ryan, who faces a primary election next week.
Anxious that that may not be enough, Priebus also joined a handful of high-profile Trump allies in considering whether to confront the candidate directly following a series of startling stances and statements with Election Day quickly approaching.
“Instead of speaking out against instances of bigotry, racism and inflammatory rhetoric, whether it’s been against women, immigrants or Muslims, we made a calculus that it was better to say nothing at all in the interest of politics and winning elections”, she told CNN.
Fritsch escorted Nehlen into a campaign RV parked nearby and emblazoned with the words “Dump Paul Ryan”, explaining that the candidate would be “right back out” to resume the interview after the campaign verified the candidate’s door-knocking route. “That would be awful”, he said during a campaign stop in battleground Florida shortly after he declared, “We’ve never been this united”.
The Trump campaign has been boasting of how many small donations it has been receiving, saying in a Wednesday statement that those donations were up by 69 percent in July.
“The campaign’s focused and the campaign is moving forward in a positive way”, Manafort told Fox.
Still, two Trump insiders said Priebus has talked to Trump several times in recent days, conveying the dismay among senior party leaders and donors.
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Trump spokesman Jason Miller rejected suggestions that Manafort is “mailing it in” as “completely erroneous”. The campaign “just finished up our strongest month of fundraising to date, we’re adding talented and experienced staffers on a daily basis and Mr. Trump’s turning out bigger, more enthusiastic crowds than Hillary Clinton ever could”.
