Trump slams Republican Party, House Speaker Ryan

House Speaker Paul Ryan declared Monday that he will not campaign for or defend the nominee, giving House Republicans permission to dump him.

His scorched-earth approach, days after his sexual predatory language caught on tape triggered a mass Republican defection, threatened to alienate even more supporters.

Trump said at the beginning of the 90-minute showdown with Clinton: “I apologize to my family”. “The very foul mouthed Sen”. Of those, only one, Justin Amash of MI, is still in Congress. Amash has refused to endorse Trump as well, and tweeted Saturday, “He should have stepped aside long ago”. Describing “disloyal” Republicans as more hard than Clinton, he said: “They come at you from all sides”. Similarly, if there are areas in which Trump turns out to be particularly strong – which could be the case in northern and south-central MI – it could potentially have an impact on Republican candidates in those areas if they are not seen as appropriately supportive of the nominee. And for me-what they’re thinking, one thing is, they don’t want Trump’s immigration plan.

It was a dramatic escalation of rhetoric by the Republican presidential nominee whose campaign was hobbled on Friday with the release of a recording on which Trump brags about groping women without their consent because he is famous.

Republican Senate candidates have tried all year to build their campaigns into insulated operations that can withstand the controversy of the day created by Trump. There is no precedent in modern American political history for elected officials of either party to refuse en masse to support their presidential nominee. “His threat, he followed through and it had no effect, so I don’t know what he is going to do as an encore”.

Ayotte later said she misspoke, and on Saturday she withdrew her endorsement of Trump.

Trump’s campaign dismissed the allegations as having no merit or veracity, and it attacked one of the media outlets that published the women’s accounts as acting on a vendetta. “But there’s a whole sinister deal going on”, Trump said while campaigning in Ocala, Florida.

But some of Trump’s supporters admitted their confidence was shaken. On Wednesday he amped it up further by suggesting Clinton “has to go to jail”.

“Paul Ryan is focusing the next month on defeating Democrats, and all Republicans running for office should probably do the same”, Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement responding to Trump’s Tuesday attacks.

In an extraordinary party revolt, almost half of all 331 incumbent Republican senators, House members and governors have condemned Trump’s lewd remarks on the video, and roughly one in 10 have called for him to drop out of the race, a Reuters review of official statements and local news coverage indicates.

The St. Louis debate underscored the long-running frustration among establishment Republicans that Trump has made no real effort to moderate his tone in a fashion that would reassure and win over independents and swing voters in the blue states that he must flip to win the White House.

Meanwhile, the head of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, said he’s in full coordination with the embattled presidential nominee. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, reversed herself and said she will support Trump after all. But as soon as they face a whiff of blowback from some in the party, they cave and fall back in line.

In another series of tweets, the Republican nominee called Ryan “weak and ineffective”, Sen.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a former rival for the White House who has became a close ally of Trump, also reaffirmed his backing even as he called Trump’s comments in the 2005 video “completely indefensible”. “I’ll tell you what’s immoral, to pursue ideological policies that will have little meaningful impact on the environment but have a very real and very negative impact on our economy, on jobs and on our way of life”, McConnell said. “I always figure it out”. “And therefore my position has not changed”.

Pence Monday also tried to smooth out Trump’s contention during the debate that he and his running mate didn’t agree on US military policy in Syria.

By Sunday, he offered a more direct apology, but then he did what Trump does best, he went on the offensive.

“You would think from the way it played over the weekend that Paul Ryan had stepped out on his porch and set himself on fire, and that didn’t happen”, Keene said. “We’re going to figure it out”, he said.