Rather than sticking to a script like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had urged, Trump, in Tampa, Florida, instead railed extemporaneously at the Republican Party and some of its most well-known figures.
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Whitman, according to one of the people present, did not stop at comparing Trump to Hitler and Mussolini.
With roughly a month before the convention, Trump appears to be increasingly alienating members of the party whose presidential nomination he seeks.
Trump is also pulling back from his earlier statements on his fundraising goal.
“You’re going to say please keep him the hell out of Florida, he’s driving us insane”. I think we’ll have this intermittently, I just don’t know how you can convince thousands of delegates that they were wrong.
Republicans here stress that the alarm bells have not yet rung: Trump still has five months to assemble a finance team, and several here said they could see themselves coming to his aid if he displayed more maturity as a candidate and tamped down his controversial rhetoric. Trump is trying to make Republicans support him, and the result could be a total victory for Democrats in November.
“I never planned to spend all that much time in the convention hall”, Portman said.
“He needs to stop the campaign infighting, shut up and stop calling an American who was born in IN a Mexican”, said Texas billionaire Doug Deason, who was invited to Thursday’s meeting but who is not attending because he will be at Trump fundraisers in Texas next week. “They did it with IN, they did it with New York – “We’re going to win New York” – and I won IN a massive landslide”.
“Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their colour and the tone of his hue”, Trump said. Bondi has said she wasn’t aware of the fraud allegations.
That last bit is a nice segue to the new poll out of Utah this morning: Trump 35, Clinton 35, Gary Johnson 13. Some are very carefully navigating the different fundraising committees set up by the RNC to ensure that their money is earmarked exclusively to help the party and other Republican candidates running in 2016.
“We have to get smart”. Below is one of the most viewed Facebook videos.
But Lewandowski calls Trump’s lean operation a virtue, not a handicap.
A group of major news organizations are petitioning a federal judge to release videos of Donald Trump being questioned under oath in lawsuits over his Trump University real estate seminar program. Trump has mocked her Native American heritage in recent weeks, regularly referring to her disparagingly as “Pocahontas”.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a campaign speech Saturday, June 11, 2016, in Tampa, Fla.
He also hugged an American flag to demonstrate his love for his country.
Toward the end of his speech, supporters broke into a chorus of “Happy Birthday”.
“Why would I feel compelled to support somebody whose positions I fundamentally disagree with?” he asked, adding that the choice between Trump and Clinton “is not a very good choice”. Trump turns 70 on Tuesday.
“I’m not going to be an attack dog”, said Romney, who then made clear that he’ll call out Trump for comments with which he does not agree.
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Information for this article was contributed by Julie Bykowicz, Jonathan Lemire and Sergio Bustos of The Associated Press; by Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg News; by Laura Vozzella, Fenit Nirappil, Philip Rucker and Dan Balz of The Washington Post; by Kurtis Lee of the Los Angeles Times; and by Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.
