Donald Trump attempted to reboot his campaign yet again on Friday by endorsing House Speaker Paul Ryan and ending bitter feuds with two other Republicans.
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In an effort to fix some of the damage he had inflicted on his presidential campaign, Donald Trump endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan to end a four-day standoff that exposed the deeps chasms in the Republican.
Mr Ryan, the top USA elected Republican, had no plans to attend the event, in a sign of lingering friction between the pair.
“We need unity. We have to win this election”, Trump told a rally in Ryan’s state of Wisconsin, as he stressed a “big tent” Republican Party is the only way to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in November’s election.
The move comes toward the end of a tumultuous week for Trump’s campaign – one in which his reluctance to support Ryan’s re-election bid reportedly angered GOP leaders. And then there’s Paul Nehlen, Ryan’s longshot primary challenger who Trump just four days ago praised for defending him.
On Tuesday, Trump withheld his support for the House speaker’s Wisconsin primary reelection, saying in an interview with The Washington Post, “I’m just not quite there yet”, words that echoed Ryan’s comments about his own initial hesitation to endorse Trump as presidential nominee back in May: “I’m just not ready to do that at this point”.
The Club for Growth, which advocates for free market economic policies, has always been opposed to Trump, spending millions on ads to target the Republican presidential candidate.
Two months after Ryan endorsed Trump, the pair have, if anything, grown further apart.
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Speaking of Reagan, remember when his former spokesperson and speechwriter said: “I knew Ronald Reagan; I worked for Ronald Reagan”.
In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Clinton’s lead over Trump narrowed to less than 3 percentage points, down from almost 8 points on Monday.
“She’s a monster, OK?”
“If you don’t like me, that’s OK, ” Trump told the Iowa crowd.
Donald Trump tried to mend fences with a few critics within the GOP on Friday. With regard to immigration, Ryan recently said “we have to come up with a solution that doesn’t involve mass deportation”, but mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is exactly what Trump wants to do. “What I say to him privately and what I’ve said publicly is Hillary Clinton is the one to focus on, not another Republican, not a private citizen criticizing you”.
This came soon after Mrs Clinton addressed her own political vulnerabilities while facing a group of minority journalists in Washington.
She maintained that “I never sent or received anything marked classified”, while acknowledging that some material she sent may retroactively have been considered classified by other government agencies.
“It doesn’t make me feel good when people say those things, and I recognize that I have work to do”, Clinton said. The parents had criticised Trump at last week’s Democratic National Convention.
At a rally Friday outside a brewery in Milwaukee, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, took aim at Trump for withholding endorsements of Ryan and McCain.
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Joe Borelli, a Trump co-chair in NY, said the campaign will weather the storm.
