Trump mocks GOP leaders who abandoned him

Donald Trump on Sunday downplayed the exodus of top Republicans who have called on him to step aside or rescinded their prior endorsements.

“Tremendous support (except for some Republican ‘leadership’),” the Republican presidential nominee tweeted Sunday morning. “Thank you.”


Indeed, in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Sunday, likely Republican voters signaled that the party should continue to back Trump. Forty-five percent of likely voters surveyed said Trump should stay in the race (39 percent said he should end his campaign). The results were largely seen through a partisan lens, though. While 70 percent of Democrats said Trump should end his White House bid, only 12 percent of Republicans agreed.

Trump, however, had a far more dire prognostication for the “self-righteous hypocrites” who have abandoned their party’s standard-bearer: defeat.

“So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers - and elections - go down!” he predicted in a tweet.

Trump has maintained that he has “tremendous support” from his backers, even after the revelation of incredibly crude comments he had made in a private conversation about women in 2005 in a video first reported by The Washington Post, which sparked more than two dozen defections from prominent Republicans.

In the clip, Trump boasts about attempted adultery and sexual assault, even going so far as to brag that he can touch women’s genitals because of his celebrity. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he says. “You can do anything. Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything.”

Trump was disinvited from a Wisconsin event with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Saturday. His running mate, Mike Pence, who was scheduled to take his place, also decided not to attend the event.

But Trump on Saturday night thanked his “great supporters” in the state. “I heard that the crowd and enthusiasm was unreal!” he tweeted.