Donald Trump took aim at Speaker Paul Ryan in an interview on Fox News.
Said Trump: “I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with a lot of these people that I can tell you, including Ryan…especially Ryan.”
Trump also accused Ryan of having “opened borders and amnesty” and he charged that Ryan had promoted “bad budgets by the way, very, very bad budgets.”
President Obama relished the GOP civil war that has broken out over Donald Trump, “openly mocking Republicans who are refusing to rescind their endorsements even as they condemn the nominee for talking cavalierly about sexual assault,” Politico reports.
Said Obama: “The fact that now you’ve got people saying: ‘Well, we strongly disapprove. We really disagree. We find those comments disgusting, but we’re still endorsing him. We still think he should be president.’ That doesn’t make sense to me.”
He added: “You can’t have it both ways here. You can’t repeatedly denounce what is said by someone and then say, ‘But I’m still gonna endorse them to be the most powerful person on the planet and to put them in charge.'”
A USA Today survey shows 26% of Republican governors and members of Congress are refusing to endorse Donald Trump.
“It is an extraordinary demonstration of the fracture Trump’s candidacy has revealed in the Republican Party. There is no precedent in modern American political history for elected officials of either party to refuse en masse to support their presidential nominee. It shows that Trump will have to wage a national campaign without the fleet of surrogates and supporters that every other presidential contender has relied on for decades to help bring voters to the polls. And it illustrates how hard it will be for the GOP to rebuild if Trump loses.”
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) reversed her call for Donald Trump to resign from the GOP ticket, telling a local radio station that it’s “not a tough choice” to back him just three days after she urged him to quit, Politico reports.
Said Fischer: “I plan to vote for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence on November 8.”
Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Trump, in fact, is trying to use his break with many party leaders as a lever to ramp up support among his base, which includes many voters who feel equally estranged from the party establishment.”
“The decision means that a campaign already marked by intensely personal attacks is primed to grow even uglier in the remaining four weeks. Mr. Trump plans to keep up a relentless assault on Mrs. Clinton, including her use of a private email server and allegations about her husband, former President Bill Clinton, with the intention of keeping some of her supporters home on Election Day, his advisers said.”
“It remains questionable whether Mr. Trump’s strategy can turn around the electoral math.”
This piece is only available to Political Wire members.
Do you enjoy Political Wire? Join today for exclusive analysis, new features and no advertising.
Sign in to your account or join today!
Monthly – $5 per month or Annual – $50 per year
Al Gore hit the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton today and said that his near miss in the 2000 presidential election is “exhibit A” for why it’s so important to vote, Politico reports.
Said Gore: “Your vote really, really, really counts — a lot. You can consider me as an exhibit A of that group. Now, for those of you who are younger than 25, you might not remember the election of 2000 and what happened here in Florida and across the country. For those of you older than 25, I heard you murmuring just now. But take it from me, it was a very close election/”
Meanwhile, supporters began to chant “You won! You won!”
At a Texas fundraiser, Donald Trump continued to call out members of his own party for not being fully supportive of him, the Texas Tribune reports.
Said Trump: “I think they forgot that there was an election, because something happened in the last month where you didn’t see them, right?”
He added: “Why aren’t they on the shows? Why aren’t they all over the place?”
Ben Carson urged a conservative audience to be strong in their faith and stand by their beliefs in the face of “ever-growing government,” the Springfield News-Leader reports.
He said that tyranny will reign otherwise, “and there will be mass killings once again. The peace that we experience now will be a memory only. This is the nation that stands between peace and utter chaos.”
When asked later how he thought such a grim future might come about, Carson referenced “the whole gay marriage issue.”
He added: “I believe the reason is, if you can change the word of God in one area, then you can change it in every area. It’s the camel’s nose under the tent, and it will just be an avalanche of one thing after the other.”
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll — conducted entirely after Sunday night’s presidential debate — shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump nationally by nine points, 46% to 37%, with Gary Johnson at 8% and Jill Stein at 2%.
Brianna Keilar interviewed Ben Carson on CNN about the video showing Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault:
KEILAR: You’ve heard talk like this?
CARSON: Of course. Are you kidding me? People are always trying — when I was growing up, people were always talking about their sexual conquests and trying to make themselves appear you know like Don — Casonova. I’m surprised you haven’t heard that.
KEILAR: I haven’t heard it.
CARSON: Maybe that’s the problem.
Here are the latest state polls from the presidential race:
Virginia: Clinton 45%, Trump 36%, Johnson 7% (Roanoke)
Pennsylvania: Clinton 44%, Trump 40%, Johnson 4% (Susquehanna)
Wisconsin: Clinton 43%, Trump 35%, Johnson 8% (Loras)
Alaska: Trump 36%, Clinton 31%, Johnson 18% (Alaska Survey Research)
Donald Trump attacked John McCain, calling him “foul-mouthed” and claiming credit for the Arizona senator’s primary win, Politico reports.
Tweeted Trump: “The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) reiterated his support for Donald Trump, “bucking a wave of fellow Republicans who have withdrawn their endorsement or called on him to quit the presidential race after video of his sexually aggressive comments about women were disseminated last week,” Politico reports.
Said Rubio: “I ran against Donald Trump. And while I respect that voters chose him as the GOP nominee, I have never hesitated to oppose his policies I disagree with. And I have consistently rejected his offensive rhetoric and behavior.”
Donald Trump lashed out at House Speaker Paul Ryan “in a barrage of Twitter posts deriding the highest-ranking Republican for being weak, disloyal and a bad leader,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump also appeared to be laying the groundwork to blame Mr. Ryan and Republicans who oppose him should he lose next month, complaining that it is ‘hard to do well’ without the support of his own party. Democrats, he said, are more loyal to their own kind.”
Politico: “As his fortunes sour, anger is trumping cogent calculation, and his defiance appears to be increasing in proportion to his decline in the polls.”