“I am running against the Washington insiders," Donald Trump says. | Getty Trump strikes back against GOP critics Members of Trump’s own party have grown bolder in their rebukes of him.

A day after Donald Trump faced a wave of criticism from members of the Republican Party, the GOP presidential nominee took to Twitter and the airwaves to hit back against his detractors.

“I am running against the Washington insiders, just like I did in the Republican Primaries,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “These are the people that have made U.S. a mess!”


The Manhattan billionaire’s campaign is working to get back on the rails in the wake of its worst week yet. Trump spent the week after the well-received Democratic National Convention feuding with the Gold Star parents of a fallen Muslim solider and with prominent lawmakers in his own party. Clinton’s convention bump combined with a week of negative headlines have put Trump in a hole that most polls show to be 10 points or more.

Members of Trump’s own party have grown bolder in their rebukes of him. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who had long refused to say if she would support the real estate mogul, announced Monday evening in a Washington Post op-ed that the will not vote for Trump, making her the sixth GOP senator to make such a declaration.

And the Republican national security community has been especially critical of Trump. A group of 50 senior national security officials, all alums of Republican presidential administrations, penned a public letter warning that Trump would "risk our country’s national security and well-being.” All of the letter’s signatories said they will not vote for the Republican nominee.

Trump on Tuesday morning, however, said the national security officials are simply upset because they aren't a part of his campaign.

“Well I respond by saying that I wasn't using any of them and they would have loved to have been involved with the campaign but I wasn't using, I had no interest using [them]” Trump told Fox Business Network. “Look where the country is now look where country is now on national policy, look where we are on defense, look at the mess we're in.”

Former New York Mayor and Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani said those national security experts are simply making the former reality TV star’s point for him.

“I believe it makes Donald Trump’s candidacy really clear: He's running against the Washington insiders. You just heard from the Washington insiders,” Giuliani said in an interview on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “These are the people who have been running policy for the last eight or ten years, 12 years. The American people have delivered a judgment on that. They say America is headed in the wrong direction. These are the people who headed it in the wrong direction.”

On Monday, several other Republicans announced their support for Clinton, saying in effect that Trump is unsuited to be president. Lezlee Westine, who served as the White House’s director of public liaison and deputy assistant to the president in the George W. Bush administration, threw her support behind the Democratic nominee, saying Clinton “has the expertise and commitment to American values to grow the economy, create jobs and protect America at home and abroad.”

Also supporting Clinton are Republican former Michigan Gov. William Milliken and former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey, who said he’d vote for Clinton if she were “neck and neck” with Trump in the Granite state.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took to the airwaves to defend Trump Tuesday morning, saying on Fox Business Network that all institutions aren’t working for Americans.

“We need some disruption in the institutionalism of Washington, because it has failed us,” he says. “There is a real fear in Washington not that Donald Trump will lose, there’s a fear that he will win. And that he will shake up things, and we need it.”

