Nehlen chastised Ryan for weighing in on the debate centered on the family of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq that has earned Trump widespread condemnation from those both within and outside the GOP.
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The Republican speaker has declared his support for Trump, but he said such endorsements aren’t “blank checks” and pledged to speak out against the businessman’s divisive positions if necessary.
The day before, vice presidential nominee Mike Pence broke with Trump and endorsed Ryan.
Yet the most powerful Republicans in Washington and New York’s Trump Tower concede things will not change unless Trump wants them to.
On Tuesday, Pence held a meeting with Arizona Sen. “But the larger stakes of the election are putting the country on a path where Trump’s views of the world are far in our rearview mirror”.
Trump said he’s “just not quite there yet” when it comes to backing Ryan, who has at times been critical of Trump’s most controversial comments.
Trump tweeted Wednesday that the campaign unity is “perhaps greater than ever before”. “I feel like he’s real”, said Eskew, a 54-year-old former Ben Carson supporter from Holland, Michigan. “Beat Crooked H!” – a reference to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“The candidate is in control of his campaign”, campaign chairman Paul Manafort told the Fox News Network, highlighting his inability to control the nominee.
“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.
Whether Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire media mogul and an erstwhile Republican, will play a role in courting other Republican business leaders has yet to be determined, a source close to the discussions said.
The turbulent week, including Trump’s criticism of the Muslim soldier’s family and sinking poll numbers, has led to low morale within his small campaign team. On Monday, he fired Ed Brookover, a senior adviser hired as a liaison between the campaign and the RNC.
Trump has had a running dispute with the parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan since they took the stage at last week’s Democratic National Convention.
Trump said he refused to endorse McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, for not doing enough for veterans.
Trump’s staff is suicidal with good reason. The evidence that Donald Trump is self-destructing was all over the news for anyone with a pair of eyes to see. “But the fight will be engaged as Donald Trump as the standard bearer”, Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele says.
But Democrats said the period of wondering whether Trump could become a more disciplined candidate had ended with his attacks on the Khans.
Later Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard executive Meg Whitman – a prominent Republican fundraiser – threw her support behind Clinton, saying, “Donald Trump’s demagoguery has undermined the fabric of our national character”.
The early days of the general election campaign have been a contortionist act for Pence, who has remained loyal to Trump while trying to maintain his reputation as a principled, down-to-earth Midwesterner with the primary mission of acting as an emissary to the conservative and evangelical wings of the Republican Party.
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Even Mr. Trump’s long-time ally, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, said on Tuesday it was inappropriate to criticise the Khan family.
