Republicans undercut Trump ahead of final debate Trump's campaign manager rules out the idea of widespread voter fraud, while Newt Gingrich advises him to grow a thicker skin.

Donald Trump is a hypersensitive candidate who lashes out “almost uncontrollably” to criticism, Republicans shouldn’t exploit Russian hacks on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the election is not rigged.

It’s hard to imagine Republicans making a better argument for Clinton just hours ahead of the third and final presidential debate.


With Trump trailing nationally and in a number of battleground state polls — and even Arizona — Clinton’s campaign is expecting Trump to deploy a scorched-earth approach to their Las Vegas bout. But fellow Republicans unexpectedly placed a rhetorical firewall around the real estate mogul.

Indeed, if Newt Gingrich stepped on Trump’s toes by inadvertently highlighting his thin skin as a weakness that “I hope he grows out of,” Marco Rubio and John Kasich then stomped on both of his feet.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a top Trump surrogate, dealt the first blow when he offered a candid assessment of Trump’s shortcomings, including an expansion on his notion of Big Trump, Little Trump.

“There’s a piece of his personality, which is very sensitive, particularly to anything which attacks his own sense of integrity or his own sense of respectability, and he reacts very intensely, almost uncontrollably, to those kinds of situations,” Gingrich acknowledged during an interview conducted Tuesday and published Wednesday with the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker.

“I think that’s a weakness,” he added. “I hope he grows out of it.”

Trump was poised to enter Wednesday evening’s debate with an arsenal of WikiLeaks revelations to throw in Clinton’s face. But he was advised by a prominent Republican voice to not go there.

On Wednesday morning, Rubio, the Trump-supporting Florida senator who’s seeking reelection, warned Republicans against leveraging the WikiLeaks hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal account, noting that while Democrats are the victims today, it could be Republicans tomorrow.

Perhaps no one has pushed the hacks more than Trump, who has encouraged his supporters at rallies to check out the stolen emails and blasted out headlines stemming from the disclosures to his 24 million followers on Twitter and Facebook.

Rubio argued later Wednesday in Tampa that Republicans have enough material to use against Clinton from her decades in the public eye without relying on the work of Russian agents hoping to influence the U.S. elections. He contended that giving credence to the hacks could lead to blackmail from subsequent breaches of elected officials and their family members.

“I think this one is an invitation to chaos and havoc in the future,” he said.

Kasich, the Ohio governor, and Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway both threw cold water on the notion that the election is rigged, a claim Trump has continued to push in recent days, drawing condemnation from President Barack Obama and members of the Republican Party.

“Look, to say that elections are rigged and all these votes are stolen, that’s like saying we never landed on the moon, frankly. That’s how silly it is,” Kasich said on “CBS This Morning.”

Even Conway agreed, though she argued during an interview on MSNBC that there’s a “larger conspiracy” against Trump.

“No, I do not believe that” there will be widespread voter fraud in the election, she said, adding that “there is a larger conspiracy, larger collusion.”

If Trump’s Facebook account is any indication, he didn’t the get the message from Rubio. Trump shared a Daily Caller article that, citing the WikiLeaks hacks, reported that Clinton’s campaign organized prospective vice presidential picks by race and gender.

Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon said on MSNBC that Trump’s campaign has been in a downward spiral since the first debate in September.

“I think Americans have had an opportunity to see them up close, and they’ve judged that Donald Trump doesn’t have the temperament to be president,” he said. “Increasingly, it looks like he’s gonna bring that scorched-earth approach to the final debate, too.”

For his part, Gingrich did praise Big Trump, but he also advised him not to sink to the level of “Saturday Night Live” Trump, as portrayed by Alec Baldwin, at whom Trump lashed out over the weekend, claiming his “portrayal stinks” and that the election is rigged.

“Well, if you’re gonna be president of the United States and a historic figure and not just change America but also change a lot about how we lead the world, you don’t descend to being the equivalent of Alec Baldwin,” Gingrich said.

