House Speaker Ryan of Republican is not ready to support Trump

Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said conservatives wanted to know if Trump shares their values.

The top elected Republican, Paul Ryan, said on Thursday he was not ready to endorse Donald Trump, a sign of the challenges the party's presumptive presidential nominee faces rallying the Republican establishment behind his White House bid.
Trump, who has built a huge following with an anti-establishment message, shot back at Ryan in a statement.
"I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now."
"I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," he said.
"We respect Speaker Ryan’s opinion and believe that since the primary ended early we will have time to unify. We anticipate the two meeting soon to begin to help unite the party," said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.
The Republican National Committee, under pressure to unify the party or face an electoral rout in the Nov. 8 election, said Ryan and Trump were expected to meet soon. It added that "only a united Republican Party will be able to beat Hillary Clinton."
Many Republicans have grappled this week with whether to support Trump, who has deviated from the party line on trade and upset the party establishment with offensive comments about women and immigrants. Trump on Thursday announced a new campaign finance chairman in response to questions about his readiness for a general election race.
Trump's last remaining rivals in the Republican race, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, dropped out this week, clearing the New York billionaire's path to be picked as the presidential nominee. His will likely face Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, in the Nov. 8 general election.

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Breaking News of The Day: Clinton looks to bounce back with Kentucky win

Hillary Clinton hopes to avoid another round of primary defeats that, while doing little to diminish her delegate lead over Bernie Sanders, magnify her difficulty in unifying the Democratic Party.
Primaries in Oregon and Kentucky, which vote on Tuesday, could extend her losses after the Vermont senator carried Indiana and West Virginia earlier this month.

While Sanders is expected to win in Oregon, the Clinton campaign sees an opportunity in Kentucky, a state she carried easily in her primary campaign eight years ago.
Throughout the campaign, Clinton has struggled with working-class, white voters, however, particularly in communities hit hard by manufacturing job losses in the Rust Belt. It’s a group that's also boosting Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy.

Over the weekend, Clinton made several stops in Kentucky, including drop-ins at churches, and she continued her busy schedule on Monday. Despite an earlier decision to shift resources to general election swing states, the campaign is running television ads in the Bluegrass State.
On Monday, Clinton dropped by a smoke-filled diner in Paducah. “I want to help bring back the kind of economy that worked for everybody in the 1990s,” she told the audience, which included at least one Trump supporter.

Entering Tuesday's contests, Clinton leads Sanders by nearly 300 pledged delegates. When super delegates — elected officials and party leaders free to support either candidate — are factored in, her lead is much larger and brings her to within 150 delegates away of the 2,383 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press. In the final round of state primaries next month, Clinton holds a 10-point lead in California, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, where 475 pledged delegates will be at stake.

Yet Sanders has repeatedly said he’ll fight all the way to the Philadelphia convention in July. And he’s showing he’ll battle for every last delegate, jetting on Monday to Puerto Rico, which holds a caucus on June 5.
Appalachian states, including West Virginia and Kentucky, had been loyal to Clinton, who won there by big margins over then-senator Barack Obama in 2008. Her husband also carried them in his 1992 and 1996 campaigns, and she’s been placing increased emphasis on his role in a possible Hillary Clinton administration, betting that he remains a popular figure in the region.

“I’ve already told my husband that, if I’m so fortunate to be president and he will be the first gentleman, I’ll expect him to go to work,” she told the Kentucky diners Monday.
On Sunday, she said the former president would be “in charge of economic revitalization,” particularly in hard-hit areas like Appalachian coal country. She’s also touting her plan for coal miners, including investments to create new jobs in infrastructure and repurposing mines and protecting miners’ health insurance and retirement programs.

While the outcome of the Kentucky primary won’t matter much in the overall delegate battle between Clinton and Sanders (Democrats award delegates proportionally), it could highlight the challenges ahead for Clinton in a potential match up with Trump. In exit polls of West Virginia, a third of those who voted in the Democratic contest said they planned to back Trump in November.
Part of Clinton's challenge may stem from comments she made at a town hall meeting in Ohio, when the Democratic front-runner said she would "put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." She would later apologize.

Meantime, Clinton now rarely mentions Sanders in her stump speeches, making clear that her chief target is Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, whom she’s portraying as a “loose cannon.” Separately, the main super PAC supporting her, Priorities USA, is planning to begin $6 million in anti-Trump ads starting on Wednesday.

Other high-profile Democrats have also stepped in to do battle with Trump.
After a commencement address on Saturday at Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren called Trump “a truly dangerous man.” Warren has also engaged in heated Twitter exchanges with Trump. On Sunday, President Obama, who’s largely stayed on the sidelines until a nominee is official, waded into the race during a commencement speech at Rutgers University.

“In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” he said, in an apparent reference to Trump. “That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you are talking about.’”

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Hillary Clinton Targets Republicans Turned Off by Donald Trump

After a year of staking out liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is re-positioning itself to appeal to independent and Republican-leaning white voters turned off by the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump.

With the Democratic nomination in sight, Mrs. Clinton has broadened her economic message, devoted days to apologizing for a comment she previously made that angered working-class whites, and has pledged that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who remains widely popular among the blue-collar voters drawn to Mr. Trump, would “come out of retirement and be in charge” of creating jobs in places that have been particularly hard hit.

he move comes at a time when the Republican Party is publicly grappling with whether to embrace its unconventional nominee. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, on Thursday said he was “just not ready” to back Mr. Trump.

As Mrs. Clinton talks to voters, her campaign is trying to gain endorsements from influential Republican leaders, including former elected officials and retired generals, who can help convince voters that she is their best alternative to Mr. Trump — a striking turn after Mrs. Clinton spent the past year trying to mobilize the liberal wing and labor leaders in the Democratic Party.

But her campaign, confident that the young people and liberals backing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will come around to support Mrs. Clinton in November, is focusing its efforts on white working-class women and suburban women who tend to vote for Republican presidential candidates, but who polls show hold negative views of Mr. Trump.

“I’m here because I want you to know whether people vote for me or not, whether they yell at me or not, it’s not going to affect what I will do to help,” Mrs. Clinton told residents at a health clinic here on Monday, as protesters’ chants outside of “Hillary, go home!” could be heard.

Mrs. Clinton’s two-day swing across Appalachia this week served as the beginning of the campaign’s full-court press to convince persuadable white voters that she would run a more inclusive campaign than Mr. Trump — and to signal that she would cede no demographic group to him.

“I invite a lot of Republicans and independents who I’ve been seeing on the campaign trail, who’ve been reaching out to me, I invite them to join with Democrats,” Mrs. Clinton told CNN on Wednesday. “Let’s get off the red or the blue team. Let’s get on the American team.”

In the Democratic primary, Mrs. Clinton has struggled with non-college-educated white voters and self-identified independents, often losing those groups by wide margins to Mr. Sanders. But faced with the choice between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, 51 percent of independents and 59 percent of moderates favor the former secretary of state, compared with 41 percent and 39 percent for Mr. Trump, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.

“If the primary happened to be over already, we feel the coalition we’ve built has the makings of a winning coalition as it is in a general election,” said Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman. “But,” he added, “we’re not satisfied with that. We want to make inroads even with populations that aren’t supporting her in great numbers.”

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who is supporting Mrs. Clinton, said while campaigning with her at a diner in Athens, Ohio, on Tuesday that the suburban women in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati could ultimately decide the November election. “I think educated suburban white women, to be sure, are going to be turned off en masse and there will be more of that,” he said.

But if Mrs. Clinton’s “Breaking Down Barriers Tour” in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia this week provided a road map for her campaign’s strategy in the weeks ahead, the antagonistic reception she received also highlighted her own vulnerabilities and tendency to divide and incite people — weaknesses Mr. Trump plans to exploit.

At Mrs. Clinton’s event in Athens, a protester, Peter Schmidt, 34 and a miller, held a handmade sign that read “I’d Rather Be Home Reading Your Goldman Sachs Transcripts,” a reference to the paid speeches she delivered to the Wall Street bank. Mr. Schmidt said her tour of Appalachia felt like pandering. “I don’t trust her,” he said. “That’s why I’m holding this sign.”

Mr. Trump, who has proved adept in connecting with white working-class men, also plans to hit Mrs. Clinton on her previous support for global trade deals that many Americans blame for jobs moving overseas. He has giddily seized on a comment she made to CNN in March that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

The backlash over that remark — made in the context of replacing coal with clean energy jobs — turned Mrs. Clinton’s campaign events into an Appalachian apology tour, as she was repeatedly, and pointedly, forced to explain what she called a “misstatement.”

“I can’t take it back,” Mrs. Clinton told one out-of-work coal industry worker, Bo Copley, 39, a father of three and a registered Republican, when he emotionally confronted her about the comment. “What I want you to know is I’m going to do everything I can to help no matter what happens politically,” she added. “That is just how I am made.”

The Clinton campaign is also moving to exploit the public criticism of Mr. Trump by prominent Republicans.

On Wednesday, the campaign released an online ad that quotes Mr. Trump’s former primary opponents describing him as a “know-nothing candidate,” “a narcissist” and “the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency,” among other epithets.

Priorities USA Action, a “super PAC” supporting Mrs. Clinton, intends to reach out to Republican mega donors disillusioned by their party’s presumptive nominee.

Mrs. Clinton has portrayed Mr. Trump as a “loose canon” on foreign policy and often points to her husband’s record as evidence that she would help blue-collar voters. “The brilliance of Bill Clinton gives her a particular edge,” said Gaston Caperton, a Democratic former governor of West Virginia who supports Mrs. Clinton.

Even with Mr. Clinton in its corner, the Clinton campaign does not expect to win voters like Mr. Copley, who said he is undecided but who generally fits Mr. Trump’s core demographic of supporters. But Mrs. Clinton hopes to make inroads with women like Mr. Copley’s wife, Lauren — voters whom Clinton aides call “megachurch moms” and describe as religious, Republican-leaning women who reject Mr. Trump.

Christine Matthews, a researcher who advises Republicans on how to win female voters, said that portraying Mr. Trump as dangerous on foreign policy could help Mrs. Clinton draw some Republican women whose most important issues are national security and terrorism. “Can she drive moms who have kids who think, ‘Oh my gosh, this is too scary a prospect and our country won’t be safe if he’s elected president?’ ” Ms. Matthews said. “You can imagine that attack ad in your head.”

Democrats acknowledge that the prospect of terrifying skeptical voters into supporting their candidate would not be the most inspirational campaign message.

It is a far bleaker appeal than Ronald Reagan’s message of American exceptionalism and Mr. Clinton’s promise to restore “the forgotten middle class,” both of which inspired white working-class voters to cross party lines.

But Mrs. Clinton’s pitch to Republicans reflects the grim political realities of 2016: More than half of the registered voters who said they would vote for Mrs. Clinton planned to do so in opposition to Mr. Trump, rather than in support of her candidacy, according to the CNN/ORC poll.

“Her bumper sticker for Republicans should be ‘Unified Against Trump’ or ‘Vote for the enemy. It’s important,’ ” said Ben Howe, a Republican and a contributing editor at the conservative online publication Red State, who posted the Clinton campaign’s #I'mWith Her slogan on Twitter after Mr. Trump’s decisive victory in Indiana.

Or, as Jan Franck, 65, a retiree in Charleston, W.Va., put it after hearing Mrs. Clinton speak on Tuesday: “She could be a sock puppet running against Donald Trump, and I’d vote for her.”

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Trump, lone survivor in Republican White House race, now must unify party

WASHINGTON, Donald Trump on Wednesday became the last man standing in the race for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination and faced the challenge of repairing deep fissures in the party, as his sole remaining rival, John Kasich, ended his campaign.

Anointed the presumptive nominee after winning Indiana on Tuesday and driving his closest rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, from the race, the 69-year-old New York billionaire planned to set up a vice presidential selection committee and step up efforts to seek unity among a wider group of Republicans ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

Trump's win in Indiana cleared the way for him to prepare for a likely general election match-up against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state lost the Indiana primary to tenacious challenger U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, but remains on course to become her party's nominee.

Trump told NBC News he would probably work with the Republican National Committee to raise about $1 billion for the general election campaign.

Kasich, the Ohio governor, had stayed in the race in hopes of persuading Republicans to choose him as the nominee at a contested convention in July. He ended his campaign as a clear path emerged for Trump to amass the delegates needed to secure the nomination outright.

"As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life," Kasich said in Columbus, the Ohio state capital.

Some Republican leaders said they would support Trump since he would be the nominee, stressing the importance of defeating Clinton in the general election. But there was no mad rush to support him as is typically the case when a presumptive nominee is crowned.

Former President George W. Bush, whose brother Jeb was defeated by Trump in the primary campaign, made clear he was staying out of the race. "President Bush does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign," said his spokesman, Freddy Ford.

A similar statement was issued by the spokesman for Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush. "At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics,” spokesman Jim McGrath said.

John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, said he would support Trump. McCain is a U.S. senator from Arizona who is seeking re-election this year and was insulted by Trump last year.

"As John McCain has said, he will support the nominee of the Republican Party, who is now presumptively Donald Trump," said McCain's Senate campaign spokeswoman, Lorna Romero.



Source: Reuters

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Cruz likely to block Trump on a second ballot at the GOP convention

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is close to ensuring that Donald Trump cannot win the GOP nomination on a second ballot at the party’s July convention in Cleveland, scooping up scores of delegates who have pledged to vote for him instead of the front-runner if given the chance.
The push by Cruz means that it is more essential than ever for Trump to clinch the nomination by winning a majority of delegates to avoid a contested and drawn-out convention fight, which Trump seems almost certain to lose.
The GOP race now rests on two cliffhangers: Can Trump lock up the nomination before Cleveland? And if not, can Cruz cobble together enough delegates to win a second convention vote if Trump fails in the first?
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Trump’s path to amassing the 1,237 delegates he needs to win outright has only gotten narrower after losing to Cruz in Wisconsin and other recent contests, and would require him to perform better in the remaining states than he has to this point.
In addition, based on the delegate selections made by states and territories, Cruz is poised to pick up at least 130 more votes on a second ballot, according to a Washington Post analysis. That tally surpasses 170 delegates under less conservative assumptions — a number that could make it impossible for Trump to emerge victorious.
That is why the race centers on the fevered hunt for delegates across the country. The intensity of the fight has sparked another round of caustic rhetoric — including allegations from party leaders that Trump supporters are making death threats.
“It’s unfortunate politics has reached a new low. These type of threats have no place in politics,” said Kyle Babcock, a Republican delegate from Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District. He received an email from a Trump supporter who warned, “Think before you take a step down the wrong path.”
Cruz’s chances rest on exploiting a wrinkle in the GOP rule book: that delegates assigned to vote for Trump at the convention do not actually have to be Trump supporters. Cruz is particularly focused on getting loyalists elected to delegate positions even in states that the senator from Texas lost.
On Wednesday in Indiana, for example, Republican leaders are finalizing a delegate slate that will include party activists unlikely to vote for Trump in the state’s May primary. Cruz also is poised to sweep Wyoming’s 26 delegates this weekend in a state where Trump’s campaign did not seriously compete. In Arkansas, Cruz supporters are exploring ways to topple Trump when delegates are chosen next month. And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has refused to release 171 delegates he won when he was in the race, signaling that he may contribute to the anti-Trump push in Cleveland.
Cruz said this week that he thinks the odds of a contested convention are “very high.”
“In Cleveland, I believe we will have an enormous advantage,” he told radio talk-show host Glenn Beck.

Trump has a commanding lead in total delegates and the overall vote total, but has complained that Republican leaders are conspiring against him in a bid to silence his supporters.
“The RNC should be ashamed of itself for allowing this to happen,” Trump said Tuesday night while campaigning in Rome, N.Y.
Paul Manafort, a senior adviser to Trump, said in an interview that he is confident Cruz will never have a chance to convert Trump delegates.
“Just because [Cruz] has won some delegates in a state where we have the delegates voting for us is not relevant until and unless there’s a second ballot,” Manafort said. “There’s not going to be a second ballot.”
As the battle for delegates has intensified, so too have emotions. Craig Dunn, who was elected Saturday as a Republican delegate from Indiana’s 4th Congressional District, said he has received several threatening phone calls and emails after criticizing Trump in recent news reports.
“When they reference burials and your family in the same email, and telling you that you’re being watched, that’s concerning,” he said.
In Colorado, Republicans are planning a rally Friday to call attention to threats made against GOP chairman Steve House. He said his office received 3,000 phone calls “with many being the trashiest you can imagine” after a state party convention last weekend awarded all 34 delegates to Cruz.
“Shame on the people who think somehow that it is right to threaten me and my family over not liking the outcome of an election,” he wrote on Facebook.
Cruz told Beck on Tuesday that threats made by Trump supporters, including those made by the businessman’s longtime confidant Roger Stone, are “the tactic of union thugs. That is violence. It is oppressive.”
Stone recently told an interviewer that Trump supporters would track down delegates at their hotel rooms in Cleveland if they break away from Trump.
Manafort said that “it’s certainly not part of our policy” to threaten violence, but accused “abusive” Cruz supporters of confronting Trump’s backers at party meetings nationwide.
When the presidential nomination vote is held at the convention, 95 percent of the delegates will be bound to the results in their states for the first vote, giving Trump his best shot at securing a majority.
But if Trump falls short, the convention will cast a second ballot in which more than 1,800 delegates from 31 states — nearly 60 percent of the total — will be unbound and allowed to vote however they want. By the third round, 80 percent of the delegates would be free, sparking a potential free-for-all that could continue for several more rounds.
That is the crux of the state-by-state battle that is playing out over the next two months as Republicans gather at the precinct, county, congressional district and statewide level to choose convention delegates.
“If we go into a contested convention, we’re gonna have a ton of delegates, Donald is gonna have a ton of delegates, and it’s gonna be a battle in Cleveland to see who can earn a majority of the delegates that were elected by the people,” Cruz told a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on Saturday.
He predicted that the first ballot “will be the highest vote total Donald Trump receives. And on a subsequent ballot, we’re gonna win the nomination.”
If Cruz prevails, it will be because of what supporters are doing for him nationwide with what they say is little direct input from his campaign headquarters.
In Arkansas, Republicans will not meet until next month to finalize their delegate slate, but state lawmakers who probably will win a position are talking about voting for Cruz on the second ballot.
“For the vast majority of Cruz voters, Rubio was their second choice, and for the vast majority of Rubio supporters, Cruz was their second choice. So when you’re going to pick delegates, it just makes sense that we would work together,” said state Sen. Bart Hester, who backed Rubio.
In Iowa, Cruz won 11 of the 12 delegates assigned last weekend — meaning that he probably will have their support in later rounds of balloting. That same day in South Carolina, Cruz secured three of the six delegate slots assigned by two congressional districts that Trump had easily won.
“There’s nothing underhanded going on,” said Elliott Kelley, one of the Cruz supporters who won in South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District. “Delegates are being appointed from the local level. The Trump team just doesn’t have people involved at the local level and they’re not getting delegates.”
Cruz supporters also won two of the three delegate slots from Virginia’s southernmost congressional district even though Trump won there handily. One of those Cruz supporters is Kyle Kilgore, 22, who said he would vote for Trump on the first ballot as required.
“I would have a hard time voting for Trump on the second ballot,” he said.
In Indiana, Dunn will be required to initially vote for whoever wins his congressional district in May. If Trump fails in the first round, Dunn said probably will vote for Ohio Gov. John Kasich on a second ballot.
“I’ll be looking for the candidate who I think has the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton in November,” Dunn said. “And if the person I want doesn’t get it, I won’t take my marbles and go home; I will support the nominee of the Republican Party.”
Alice Crites, Jose A. DelReal, Sean Sullivan and Katie Zezima contributed to this report




Source: wp

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