It's starting to look like Donald Trump himself may be tired of winning.

"A fresh string of attacks by Donald Trump this week on rivals in the Republican establishment — including one delivered against a prominent Latina governor in her home state — raised new doubts about his ability or desire to unite the party’s badly fractured leadership," report Jose DelReal and Jenna Johnson.

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"Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump had been widely expected by political strategists and party leaders to extend olive branches to his foes and vanquished opponents, many of whom could be crucial allies in his coming general election race against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"Yet the real estate mogul does not always appear to be interested in doing so. The revived feuding this week has only added to the concerns of holdouts such as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who reiterated Wednesday that he was not ready to endorse Trump and remained opposed to some of his core policies."

(New Mexico's governor didn't show up for the Trump rally. Her name got dropped anyway.)

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Over the past 24 hours alone, Trump has taken public shots at:

—New Mexico governor (and chair of the Republican Governors Association) Susana Martinez last night, while at a rally in her home state. “She’s got to do a better job. Okay? Your governor has got to do a better job. She’s not doing the job. Hey! Maybe I’ll run for governor of New Mexico. I’ll get this place going. She’s not doing the job. We’ve got to get her moving. Come on: Let’s go, governor.”

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—South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, today, over her decision to endorse Marco Rubio's presidential bid.

—Jeb Bush, today, for his energy level (again, some more.)

—Mitt Romney: "Poor Mitt Romney. Poor Mitt....I mean, I have a store that’s worth more money than he is" he said today. "He choked like a dog...Once a choker, always a choker." He also called Romney “stupid” and joked that he “walked like a penguin” on stage. (Before you ask: We've been mulling this line for months, since he first used it against Romney this spring. We still...have no idea.)

(Above: Trump delivers his penguin attack. Yes, you read that right.)

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"Trump’s allies have rejected the idea that he will be unable to unite the party’s establishment. They note that many members of Congress and other elected Republicans have backed Trump since he emerged as the presumptive nominee.

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"'I understand that Paul Ryan is trying to have it both ways,' said Mark Burns, an evangelical pastor and televangelist from South Carolina who frequently speaks at Trump’s rallies, during the Anaheim rally. 'Donald Trump is going to unite this party and, come November, we’re going to elect a new president by the name of President Donald Trump.'"

Ryan himself repeated today that he wouldn't be rushed into publicly supporting his party's presumptive nominee. The speaker also released this video, which included part of his remarks at Georgetown University earlier this month:

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"I've not seen the kind of bitterness in our politics like we have today," he says in the clip. "And I've got to say, I think it's both sides.... America can do better. This anxiety has got to be channeled and dealt with solutions instead of just amplified and accelerated and exacerbated." Solutions have to be "inclusive" and "optimistic," he said. "That's the choice you'll have, far more than a personality. Republicans lose personality contests anyway." (Go on...)

The Trump campaign announced late Wednesday that it had parted ways with National Political Director Rick Wiley. This was at once surprising — despite the campaign statement, "national political director" is not typically a "short-term" position, and the former Scott Walker campaign manager had been hired just last month — and unsurprising: Rumors of a Corey Lewandowski-related turf war had been swirling for days.

But this is a year that is unlike other years, which features a Republican candidate unlike other Republican candidates. Donald Trump has said he will make a serious play for Pennsylvania (and appears to pose a threat Hillary Clinton takes very seriously.) At the same time, some Republicans are pointing to a state map that seems to be turning redder.

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Or...not, says Philip Bump. The map may be a bit misleading. "Counties that grew in Pennsylvania over time also voted more Democratic," he points out. "And Philadelphia itself, the most populous county in the state, moved much more to the left....

"Pennsylvania could go for Donald Trump this year, as FiveThirtyEight's Dave Wasserman explained last week. But focusing on how voters in a small county might meander across party lines misses the story of what's really happening in the Keystone State. And, therefore, misses the story of what's happening to American politics overall." (Check out the rest here — with #charts!)

First, an advance team #protip: For a midweek, early afternoon rally — go for the smaller venue. Always the smaller venue.

That will help you avoid pictures like, say, this one:

Outside the venue:

Elsewhere on the trail (in New Mexico)...

There was also this: If you've been following the campaign and found yourself wondering whether some of it might just be performance art, the answer is — yes. At least, some of it is.

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We can't say exactly how much, but this we can say: if you caught Trump, Rubio or Clinton events earlier this year that featured guys wearing Trump armbands, or accusing Marco Rubio of stealing their girlfriend, or wearing "Settle for Hillary" T-shirts — well, everyone needs a hobby, and for two political pranksters, this is that hobby.

Today, they were back on the trail with Hillary Clinton, in California. Their shirts were not.

Security made moves to escort them out. Clinton said they could stay — with conditions.

The men identified themselves as John Nelson of Florida, and Dan Stifler from Colorado, both 32. (Note: that is how they identified themselves. We have not yet confirmed those names.)

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A reminder: performance art isn't for everyone.

To understand what went wrong for the Trump communications team today, you need to know three things: Michael Caputo is a Trump campaign adviser. Marc Caputo (no relation) is a Politico reporter. And auto-complete is a cruel, cruel mistress.

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Here's the thing: We're not sure there's anyone on the political beat who hasn't been the sender or recipient of a misdirected message or two. We have once or twice sent nagging deadline emails to campaign aides instead of the campaign reporters we intended to nag on deadline. One time, when we were an editor who did not yet work for The Washington Post, a reporter in a rush emailed us a complete story draft about a White House official. The White House official was not supposed to receive that email too. He did.

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And at least once or twice every campaign cycle, we ourselves receive an email that we were never supposed to see — a message that, among other things, lets us know which oppo researchers or campaign flacks share some of our initials. Today, a message from Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks apparently let the non-Trump Caputo know that the presumptive GOP nominee planned to focus his next round of Clinton attacks on the Whitewater controversy.

If you are very conservative, you may have just had a positive reaction to the news that Trump planned to focus attention back on Whitewater two decades after it faded from the headlines. If you are old enough to remember the '90s — and you're conservative, liberal, or anywhere in between — you may also have gotten a sudden, involuntary flashback to a time when Whitewater was more or less the only headline...a flashback that may have been compounded by the fact that independent counsel Kenneth Starr is back in the news this week. And if you are a millennial, there is a decent chance that, several sentences into this graf, you are still not entirely sure what we're talking about. (This is what we're talking about, delivered to you via vintage HTML.)

As to the strategy itself: If you're a candidate whose campaign strategy revolves around motivating your ideological base and throwing your likely fall opponent off her daily message — and you think resurrecting an old Clinton investigation will help on both fronts — then this approach might make a certain sort of sense. If you are a candidate who is making a play for independent voters, and trying to consolidate any conservatives who may be unsure about your tone — it may be a bit riskier.

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Also risky (today, and always): hiring campaign aides with the same last name as veteran reporters.

SPEAKING OF EMAIL...

"The State Department’s independent watchdog has issued a highly critical analysis of Hillary Clinton’s email practices while running the department, concluding that she failed to seek legal approval for her use of a private email server and that department staff would not have given its blessing because of the 'security risks in doing so,'" reported Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger.

"The inspector general, in a long awaited review obtained Wednesday by The Washington Post in advance of its publication, found that Clinton’s use of private email for public business was 'not an appropriate method' of preserving documents and that her practices failed to comply with department policies meant to ensure that federal record laws are followed.

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"...Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement that Clinton’s use of email was consistent with that of other secretaries and top officials at State and warned that 'political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report' for partisan purposes. 'The report shows that problems with the State Department's electronic record-keeping systems were long-standing,' he said, adding that 'she took steps that went much further than others to appropriately preserve and release her records.'

"The 83-page report reviews email practices by five secretaries of state and generally concludes that record keeping has been spotty for years."

The Clinton team's defense may not play so well, says Chris Cillizza. "There are two very important differences among Clinton, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, and former secretaries Powell and Condoleezza Rice when it comes to email practices.

"The first is that Clinton is the first and, to date, only secretary of state to exclusively use a private email address and server to conduct her business as the nation's top diplomat. All of the other names above maintained both a private and a government-issued email address. That alone doesn't make her guilty. But it does make her unique.

"Second, Clinton is the only one of that group who is currently (a) running for president and (b) the very likely nominee for one of the country's two major parties.

"This is a bad day for Clinton's presidential campaign. Period," he says. "For a candidate already struggling to overcome a perception that she is neither honest nor trustworthy, the IG report makes that task significantly harder. No one will come out of this news cycle — with the exception of the hardest of the hard-core Clinton people — believing she is a better bet for the presidency on May 25 than she was on May 23.

"Clinton remains blessed that Republicans are on the verge of nominating Donald Trump, a candidate whose numbers on honesty, trustworthiness and even readiness to lead are worse — and in some cases, far worse — than hers. But Trump's task of casting her as 'Crooked Hillary' just got easier."

There's something else in the report worth noting, says Philip Bump — and it has very little to do with Clinton at all.

"The politics of Hillary Clinton's email use as secretary of state will not be budged one inch in any direction by the just-released inspector general's report evaluating that decision," he says. "There's plenty of fodder for opponents who would argue that Clinton took an undue and unwise risk -- and the campaign already has offered its own positive spin.

"There's an underlying story in the report, though, that's worth consideration. Part of what's being sussed out in the email issue is the huge gulf between the technological capabilities of the rest of the world and that of the U.S. government.

"...None of this excuses Clinton's decision to use a private email account -- a decision with which the report clearly finds fault.

"Instead, it's a reminder of how, even if employees are fully adherent to the rules, government must almost necessarily operate in a way that's much more cumbersome than what you would find in the private sector."

On the same note: the email report came the same day as a GAO report that found that the government is spending about three-fourths of its technology budget on outdated computer systems that handle everything from Social Security to nuclear weapons (!) How outdated are they? Some of them are more than five decades old. One of them is still operating by way of floppy disk. And some of them, as House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) noted...

—If you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, the Smithsonian may be interested in your Rand Paul beer koozie or your Martin O'Malley lawn ornament. (So would we, tbh.)

—Reporter David Fahrenthold spoke with Chris Cillizza about his million-dollar story about Trump's missing military vets donation: "I started this as a side project in February, making a few calls to the charities Trump had listed as recipients. At that point, I figured it would most likely be a wild goose chase. I’d find out that the charities had all already received big donations from Trump, and that would be that. Because who stiffs military veterans in the middle of a presidential campaign?" (The donation has now officially been received and deposited, the recipient confirmed today.)

—Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants a law requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns. (In case you were wondering: yes, Wyden has endorsed Hillary Clinton...the only current presidential candidate to have released their tax returns.)

—Clinton made her second "first 100 days" pledge: to push a plan that her campaign said would be the biggest increase in infrastructure spending since Eisenhower.

—It's a day that ends in "y", which means there is speculation about whether Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, facing fresh criticism from Sanders supporters, might leave the DNC's top spot.

—A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote to "break the back of a corrupt system of campaign finance," he tells Californians in a new spot. "You can send them a message they can't ignore."