Trump lashes out at Ryan The highest-elected Republican official abandons Trump as he plunges in the polls.

Donald Trump shed any pretense of trying to hold his party together Monday, pouring gasoline on an already scorching confrontation with Republican leaders in Washington as they reckon with their nominee's spiraling campaign.

Trump swung hard at House Speaker Paul Ryan, who announced he was abandoning efforts to help elect Trump earlier in the day. His team highlighted the number of voters who pledged to vote only for Trump and no other Republicans. His campaign manager suggested that some Republican Congressman who oppose Trump are guilty of sexual harrassment. And Trump's Virginia state director convened a protest outside the headquarters of the Republican National Committee, accusing the party of bailing too quickly on their only chance to stop Hillary Clinton.


“These are all establishment guys who have never supported him, and they’re using this latest thing as a pretext for withdrawing their support,” said Corey Stewart, the Trump Virginia director. (Stewart was quickly terminated by the campaign on Monday afternoon for his role in the protest.)

“This latest thing” is the newly leaked “Access Hollywood” video from 2005 in which Trump can be heard claiming to grope women’s genitals with impunity because he’s a celebrity. The casual boasting about sexual assault was finally the scandal that sent Republicans fleeing.

But Trump — who said over the weekend that there’s “zero chance” that he’ll drop out of the race — lashed out at Ryan, tweeting, “Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.”

However, Trump made no mention of Ryan at an afternoon rally in Pennsylvania, instead railing against Clinton before a high-energy crowd, and issuing a threat if more damaging tapes of him go public. "If they wanna release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary Clinton doing inappropriate things,” Trump warned.

At a separate Pennsylvania rally on Monday evening, Trump did not explicitly mention Ryan, but he did lament a lack of leadership "on both sides." He then went more directly at Ryan, attacking those who "can't fix a budget but they start talking about their nominee."

One oasis for Trump appears to be the RNC. Chairman Reince Priebus told the 168-member committee on a conference call that the RNC is still fully behind Trump and that the last few days of scandal have had no impact on their relationship. That message puts Priebus strikingly at odds with Ryan, his fellow Wisconsinite and longtime political ally, and it threatened to open a new front in the divisions within the Republican Party.

Stewart said he was not surprised that he was fired, which he attributed to the RNC's influence in the Trump campaign. He noted that he was working on a volunteer basis and said he will continue to support Trump for president.

Arizona GOP Chairman Robert Graham, a potential Priebus successor, issued a blistering statement Monday that scolded the RNC for halting some paid mailers on Trump's behalf — but he also reserved his hardest hit for Ryan and other Republicans who fled Trump.

“Leadership is more than stopping political mail, not campaigning for someone or making statements condemning a person’s comments made nearly a dozen years before,” Graham said in the statement, issued moments before the RNC convened its conference call. “Leadership is making the tough decisions, digging in and sacrificing for beliefs and ideas greater than one person.”

“We understand when the leftist media condemns Republican candidates with bias,” Graham continued. “However, it is hard to understand why some are willing to surrender the principles and values we espouse as conservatives well-knowing that Hillary Clinton, if President, will systematically condemn our freedoms.”

But a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll underscored the peril of their position: Trump is trailing Clinton by 11 points in a four-way matchup, and Democrats are surging to a lead in voters’ down-ballot preferences.

Among the RNC’s considerations is whether to redirect party funding to down-ballot races. Before Ryan’s move, most RNC members seemed poised to redouble support for Trump, but Trump’s campaign continued to spiral on Monday, shaking their calculus.

That’s despite Trump’s aggressive debate performance Sunday, which initially seemed to salve some GOP fears. By Monday morning, it was clear that the feeling was only temporary. Now Trump is in a vise after days of directing unrestrained hostility toward Republicans who have abandoned him — including his own campaign manager’s suggestion that some high-profile detractors are sexual assailants. His weekend message became part of a threatening undercurrent and an implied warning that lingered Monday: Stick with us — or else.

“I certainly hope Speaker Ryan keeps his word and endorsement of Donald Trump,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on “CBS This Morning.” Ryan did, technically maintain his endorsement of Trump, despite his pledge not to expend any energy to help elect him.

Clinton’s camp reveled in the GOP turmoil, which top Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri called a “civil war.”

“I think it’s pretty stunning that right after the debate the Speaker of the House has to come out and say he’s no longer going to defend Donald Trump and that each Republican member of Congress has to decide for themselves whether they’re going to support the nominee,” she told reporters aboard the campaign plane Monday. “I understand why they’re doing that, but … there was a time when they could have stopped Donald Trump, there was a time where they could’ve spoken out against him. That time was the summer and obviously it’s too late now.”

The ferocity of the Trump camp toward fellow Republicans came even as Trump apologized for his comments and, during the debate, he insisted he had never actually committed the acts he was caught discussing. But before he could mount his defense, Trump lost the support of Republicans in close Senate races — from New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte to Nevada’s Joe Heck to Arizona’s John McCain. On Sunday morning, as his campaign reeled, Trump delivered a damning indictment.

“So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!” he tweeted.

That was similar to the language Conway used Sunday night when she accused some of Trump’s Republican detractors of committing sexual harassment.

“I would talk to some of the members of Congress out there, when I was younger and prettier, them rubbing up against girls, sticking their tongues down women’s throats who — uninvited — who didn’t like it,” she told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, adding that “some of them, by the way, are on the list of people who won’t support Donald Trump because they all ride around on a high horse.”

It wasn’t just Trump’s hostility toward Republicans that threatened to provoke further fallout within the party. It was his decision to ignore pleas of Republican leaders to avoid reigniting the 1990s sex scandals that plagued the Clinton White House. Instead, Trump dialed it up to a 10, holding a pre-debate news conference with four women who have accused the Clintons of victimizing them, some sexually — and he brought them as guests to the debate.

And when the debate moved on to other subjects, Trump ignited further frustration among party heads by threatening to jail Clinton if he is elected president — and humiliating his running mate, Mike Pence, his primary bridge to the Republican establishment.

Pressed by moderator Martha Raddatz about his position on intervention in Syria, Trump dismissed Pence’s call for military strikes against the Assad regime to help stem the bloodshed in Aleppo.

“He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree,” Trump said.

View Poll: Clinton leads by double digits after Trump tape According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump among likely voters, 46 percent to 35 percent. Gary Johnson has 9 percent and Jill Stein has 2 percent.

Pence on Monday rejected chatter that he considered leaving the ticket over the turmoil of recent days and did a round of morning TV appearances praising Trump's debate performance. He said there’s no daylight between him and Trump on Syria and pinned the discrepancy on the wording of Raddatz’s question (though Raddatz practically used Pence’s exact words).

"The real story this morning is Donald Trump stepped up and won the debate last night that seemed to be against all odds,” Pence said on “Fox & Friends.” “He stepped up. He showed humility, he showed strength, he expressed genuine contrition for the words that he had used on the video that became public, and then he moved directly into the choice the American people are facing.”

Trump appeared to win credit from many Republicans for his second-half performance in the debate, when he pressed a more fundamental case against Clinton’s trustworthiness and highlighted her remarks in closed-door appearances with Wall Street executives to argue that she’s duplicitous — telling wealthy donors one thing and telling voters another.

Yet his pledge to throw Clinton in jail had even supportive Republicans tearing out their hair and describing it as “banana republic” behavior.

“Winning candidates don’t threaten to put opponents in jail. Presidents don’t threaten prosecution of individuals. Trump is wrong on this,” tweeted Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush, who joined Trump’s “Bush Alumni Coalition” two weeks ago.

But even if Trump manages to survive the latest incarnation of the GOP civil war, he still faces the potential release of more devastating tapes, which individuals ranging from Geraldo Rivera to former “The Apprentice” producer Bill Pruitt have hinted at.

Conway was asked on multiple shows Monday morning about whether more damaging tapes will emerge, and she repeatedly offered the same response. “There is no way for me to know that,” she said.