JUDY WOODRUFF: And so what sort of pressure, Robert, is there on the Republican Party, on the leadership of the party to either work with Donald Trump or to distance themselves from him?
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If Clinton claims states such as Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina, where recent polls suggest she has a significant lead, Trump would need to win most of the states bordering one of the Great Lakes to have any chance at reaching 270.
Weinstein is a veteran of Dole’s 1996 campaign. Nevertheless, it’s a jolting prospect now, with roughly three months still left before the November 8 vote and weeks before the three presidential debates.
Her swift condemnation at a Wednesday campaign rally of Trump’s remark that gun rights activists could stop her from nominating liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices was a rare instance where she has directly engaged her Republican rival in the 2016 race for the White House.
Clinton’s advisers say they see little benefit in her going toe-to-toe with Trump over every personal accusation, generating sound bites that would dominate cable news broadcasts. “He believes he’s going to win Pennsylvania”. “And that’s because the issues are what the American people believe in, and he’s right and they are right”.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign team is to meet officials from the Republican National Committee on Friday in what was described as a routine meeting to discuss joint operations in the state of Florida. From his inflammatory comments regarding the parents of Gold Star soldier, to his suggestion that 2nd Amendment supporters “take care” of Hillary, to his conviction that Clinton and Obama are the “founders of ISIS”, the RNC has been pleading with the Trump campaign to stay on message.
And his backers are blaming the media for the perception that all is not well. But according to my sources in the Trump campaign, Trump is adamant that he will not change, that he wants to continue to run a campaign from the gut, on his instincts. Clinton also beat Trump in a Bloomberg poll that asked which candidate would “fight hard for the middle class”. He has stopped criticizing a Muslim family of a fallen US soldier.
“He certainly has at least shifted numerous headlines towards his economic plan, but a lot of attention continues, and likely will continue, to be paid to his temperament”, Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua.
In an appearance on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor”, Trump defended his own fundraising efforts.
It all largely overshadowed the content of 44 previously-unreleased email exchanges Clinton had while at the State Department. She opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asian trade agreement she backed as secretary of state, but said at her own MI event this past week that “the answer is not to rant and rave and cut ourselves off from the world”. He even acknowledged that losing might not be so bad.
“Look, all I do is tell the truth”, he said.
All of it, to some Republicans, should lead the party to give up on its nominee.
They call the NY real estate mogul a threat to the party and to the nation.
The new edition of TIME magazine features a cover story titled, “Inside Donald Trump’s Meltdown”, chronicling Donald Trump’s disastrous three weeks since his unsuccessful and poorly-managed Republican National Convention. As a result, they want the party to focus on shoring up congressional power.
“They’re going to do it sooner or later”. Their secondary hope is that the RNC would divert more resources to this year’s Senate and House races. They could abandon a state such as Virginia, for example, and focus more on a state such as IN, where Democrat Evan Bayh is trying to make a Senate comeback.
Priebus said today in Erie that’s not true, the party is not moving away from Trump, he’s sticking with the nominee.
Trump has blamed the USA news media for taking many of his comments out of context, and on Thursday night, some of his supporters heckled and cursed reporters who covered his rally in a large arena in nearby Kissimmee.
“We’ve always found it’s wise to have people traveling with him, because it’s an opportunity to have him engaged and not just sitting there”, Manafort said.
Donald Trump hasn’t quite asked the dead to vote for him, but he’s almost there.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Robert, we have seen more – or at least a number of prominent Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of ME come out and say they couldn’t support Donald Trump. Even for frightful presidential candidates like Senator John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, the party coalesced behind the nominees and there was unity.
Huizenga, of Holland, is withholding an endorsement but could still vote for Trump.
And in Erie, Pennsylvania, the candidate himself sounded upbeat a day after acknowledging his campaign was having trouble.
Democrats, for instance, already have called on retired Marine Lt. Gen. Jack Bergman, the surprise victor of the open 1st Congressional District Republican primary in northern MI, to repudiate Trump for tangling with the Gold Star family.
“It’s nearly certainly a direct result of a successful, professional, polished convention”, said Larry Sabato, director for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
During the Republican primaries, Trump’s strategy to rely on “earned media” – the fact that he was a celebrity candidate who deluged the airwaves with interviews – worked. “She lied when she said she only had one device”. Trump tried last week, but it didn’t stick.
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What is that telling you, somebody who’s been covering politics for some time, and what does it say to Republicans who are watching this race so closely? “And I mean, if it is true, that’s OK too because all I have to do is stop funding the Republican Party”.
