Republican presidential nominee
Donald Trump escalated his war with his own party’s leadership Tuesday by
refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul D. Ryan or Sen. John McCain,
two of the
GOP’s highest-ranking elected officials, in their primary campaigns.
Trump’s comments — an
extraordinary breach of political decorum that underscores the party’s deep
divisions — came as President Obama delivered his sternest rebuke yet of the
celebrity mogul candidate. Obama declared Trump “unfit to serve as president” and
“woefully unprepared to do this job,” and he challenged Republican leaders to
withdraw their support of their nominee.
Obama punctuated his remarks,
delivered at a Tuesday morning news conference, by explaining that he had never
before felt compelled to so thoroughly denounce a political opponent. While he
recalled disagreeing with McCain and Mitt Romney on policy issues in the 2008
and 2012 campaigns, Obama said that he never questioned their qualifications or
their “basic decency,” and that he knew they would “abide by certain norms and
rules and common sense. But that’s not the situation here.”
In an interview with The
Washington Post on Tuesday, Trump said he was not backing Ryan in his primary
election next Tuesday in Wisconsin, or McCain in his Arizona primary later this
month. Both have endorsed Trump but have criticized some of his policies and
statements, most recently his belittling of the parents of dead
U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan.
Trump praised Ryan’s underdog opponent, Paul Nehlen,
for running “a very good campaign” and said of Ryan: “I like Paul, but these
are horrible times for our country. We need very strong leadership. We need
very, very strong leadership. And I’m just not quite there yet. I’m not quite
there yet.”
Trump’s comments underscore the
continuing divisions in the GOP two weeks after the party’s national convention
in Cleveland, which was carefully choreographed to showcase unity. Also
Tuesday, Rep. Richard L. Hanna (N.Y.) became the first sitting Republican
member of Congress to declare publicly his plans to vote for Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump said that Ryan has sought his endorsement but
that he is only “giving it very serious consideration.” Responding to Trump,
Ryan spokesman Zack Roday said in a statement: “Neither Speaker Ryan nor anyone
on his team has ever asked for Donald Trump’s endorsement. And we are confident
in a victory next week regardless.”
Trump made his comments during a wide-ranging 50-minute
interview Tuesday afternoon over lunch at the Trump National Golf Club in
Northern Virginia.
He said he will work to negotiate the terms of
general-election debates in his favor, saying that three is “the right number”
but that they should not be scheduled on the same nights as National Football
League games or the baseball World Series. He said that he should have
influence in selecting “a fair moderator” for each debate and that third-party
candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein should not be allowed on stage. “I’d
rather have head to head” with Clinton, Trump said.
He took issue with the
characterization of Clinton at last week’s Democratic National Convention as a fighter and a change-maker. “Hillary’s not a
change person. She’s going to be a person to keep it just the way it is,” Trump
said, biting into his cheeseburger. “It’s going to be four more years of
Obama.”
Trump lashed out at the media, including The Post,
which he accused of turning sharply against him since he secured the
nomination. “It’s myself really against the media,” he said, citing what he
views as “a tremendous bias against me.”
Source: washington post.
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