Donald Trump on Tuesday simultaneously celebrated a newfound freedom and attacked the Republican Party, after losing support from a number of party members since the release of tapes showing him brag about sexual assault.
“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to,” Trump posted to Twitter on Tuesday morning.
Trump launched his latest Twitter tirade shortly after 8 a.m. ET, with a direct attack aimed at House Speaker Paul Ryan, the top elected Republican.
“Despite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), It is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!” he wrote.
After a roughly 40-minute break from Twitter, Trump attacked again.
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The blast comes one day after Ryan told Republicans in the House that he was no longer going to support Trump as the Republican nominee for president after the release of a video showing Trump making extremely boorish and vulgar comments about sexually assaulting women. Forty Republican members of Congress and the Senate have withdrawn their support for Trump, almost all calling on him to quit the race, according to The Associated Press.
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Trump is playing a “blame game” — one that was predictable, said Larry Sabato, an American political scientist and professor at the University of Virginia.
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The contentious Republican nominee simply doesn’t have the ability to pull together the support necessary to win a presidential contest, Sabato said.
“And therefore, at some point, he would become frustrated and start blaming others. And now he’s blaming all the Republican Party leadership. And he’s blaming the media and he’s blaming the moderators of the debates and he’ll blame voter fraud before it’s over.”
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On Twitter, Trump even gave the Democratic Party props for appearing more united than the Republicans.
Ryan’s office told USA Today the Speaker is “focusing the next month on defeating Democrats, and all Republican running for office should probably do the same.”
Does Trump have reason to be offended by Republican revocations of support? Not according to Sabato.
“Donald Trump has said and done things that would have eliminated any other major party nominee I can remember in my rather long lifetime of following politics,” he said. “He’s gotten away with most of it. He’s got nothing to complain about.”
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