Trump tries to stop the bleeding The campaign is struggling to reverse its downward spiral as Republicans' frustration with their nominee nears a breaking point.

Donald Trump is facing a whirlwind of criticism from Republican leaders — including some of his closest allies — as he fends off reports of a staff shake up, another intervention and even rumblings that he could be urged to step aside as the party's nominee.

On Wednesday, Paul Manafort, Trump's top strategist, flatly denied a report that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani are planning an intervention after a stunning streak of unforced errors: the Repubican nominee’s combative response to a Gold Star family that criticized him during last week’s Democratic National Convention; his apparent lack of knowledge related to Ukraine and Russia; and his purposeful snubbing of GOP stalwarts Sen. John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan.


Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, did a bit to mend fences Tuesday, saying he endorsed Ryan and that Trump had encouraged him to do so . “These two men are gonna do great things to restore this country at home and abroad,” Pence said on Fox News.

But the level of alarm among top Republicans is mounting. Even Priebus, who has tried to gently coax Trump to help unify Republicans around his campaign, abandoned his softer demeanor when he spoke with senior Trump staff on Tuesday afternoon. “He lit into him [Trump] pretty good,” said a source with knowledge of the conversation. “It was basically him saying, ‘Do you realize how badly you’re fucking this up?’”

Amid reports suggesting that he and other staffers are beginning to “phone it in,” Manafort subtly shifted blame to his candidate. He admitted that Trump’s comments in response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan were “not smart.” And he made it clear that it’s Trump, not any adviser or ally bending his ear, who is responsible.

“Well, first of all, the candidate is in control of his campaign. That’'s No. 1,” Manafort said in a TV interview. “And I’m in control of doing the things that he wants me to do in the campaign.”



He attempted to dismiss the “turmoil” as “another Clinton narrative that's being put out there.” But sources close to the campaign tell a different story of dysfunction and dismay inside Trump Tower.

“There’s just not much communication going on. It’s really sad, to be honest with you. They really just aren’t working as a team. Everyone’s just doing their own little thing,” said one former Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I just wish he’d stop answering the questions. People don’t want a politician and they got someone who’s not a politician, so he’s going to make these kind of mistakes.”

This adviser said Trump “literally can’t help himself” in responding to perceived slights or taunts — and that his team and closest allies are demoralized and frustrated, especially over the apparent disconnect between Trump and the RNC.

The adviser said Trump had easily bounced back from other controversies, but this latest round borders on a point of no return. “It feels like we’re close to it.” The only silver lining? “Republicans’ intense hatred for Clinton. You remind yourself who the opposition is.”

Clinton, however, has largely skated past her own unforced errors — she wrongly asserted in an interview Sunday that FBI director James Comey had praised her truthfulness during the investigation into her use of a private email server — because Trump’s behavior since the Democratic National Convention has been all-consuming.

All week, in fact, the GOP nominee has been stomping on what might have been another opportune news cycle. The Democratic National Committee is going through a public purge as its CEO, communications director and chief financial officer all left on Tuesday, days after Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned under pressure. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported on a “secretly organized” airlift of $400 million to Iran that coincided with the release of four Americans in January.

In the past 48 hours, however, Republicans criticizing Trump and, in some cases, leaving the party altogether and declaring their support for Clinton, have dominated the news cycle. Following reports that Sally Bradshaw and Maria Comella — former staffers to Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, respectively — were backing Clinton, former GOP California gubernatorial candidate and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman announced Tuesday that she was not only following suit but planning to make a significant financial contribution to the Democrat’s campaign.

Christie and Gingrich, two of Trump’s closest allies and runners-up to serve as his running mate, have also blasted the nominee’s response to a Muslim family whose son was killed in Iraq, while also criticizing Trump’s especially undisciplined, unfocused performance over the past week.



Christie told reporters Tuesday that Trump’s response to the Khan family, who first blasted Trump during the Democratic convention last week, was “inappropriate” and that the loss of their son on the battlefield “gives them the right to say whatever they want, whether they’re right or wrong.”



“What Trump has done is very self-destructive,” Gingrich said Wednesday. “I don’t know if it’s a fixable problem, but I think it’s a very big moment for Trump. He has got to find a way to slow down, really learn some new lessons.”

A campaign staffer said there’s “definite frustration [on the staff] with the candidate for obvious reasons. For example, why keep the Khan story going?”

Trump’s fixations over perceived injustices have left the campaign team “wondering what is next,” said the staffer, though he added that the meltdown narrative is overblown and compared Trump’s stumbles to Mitt Romney’s occasional gaffes in 2012.

Still, Trump is less than two full weeks into his time as the Reublican nominee, and the top trending question on Google: “Is Trump dropping out of the elections?

The second most popular trending query was, “What is a Trump surrogate?” hours after former Trump campaign manager and current Trump surrogate Corey Lewandowski got into an argument on CNN about President Barack Obama’s Harvard transcripts and status as a citizen.

The third trending question is, “What will happen if Trump quits?”

“The Trump train is definitely in the ditch right now, but there’s plenty of time for him to get it out and keep driving,” said Charlie Black, a long-time GOP lobbyist in Washington and a Manafort ally. “If this was Oct. 3, this would be a huge problem. But nothing that happens right now is going to matter that much.”

But many top Republicans aren’t so blasé about Trump’s demonstrated unwillingness to pivot into general election mode and his propensity for attacking fellow Republicans with a frequency and enthusiasm similar to that he lavishes on his Democratic opponent.

Priebus, who has spent months cozying up to Trump in an effort to foster more trust and mutual respect between the candidate and a skeptical GOP establishment, was livid on Tuesday after the nominee went out of his way to disparage Ryan, who endorsed Trump despite his deep misgivings. In an interview Tuesday, Trump actually invited The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker to ask him if he was endorsing Ryan in his Wisconsin primary next week so that he could issue a stinging rejoinder, mimicking Ryan’s own reluctance from months ago by saying that he’s “not there yet.”

More than his inability to focus on Clinton, Trump’s spurning of Ryan could be devastating if it breaks the fragile détente that Priebus and others worked to broker between the party and its nominee. “The Ryan thing is different because it’s the single most valuable Republican endorsement that Donald Trump has received,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP strategist in Washington. “And he has now told every other Republican that there’s no appreciation, no respect and no loyalty that comes with endorsing Donald Trump.”

According to a longtime Trump confidant, the candidate himself may believe he no longer needs to play nice with the RNC now that he has gotten through the convention. “The idea of Reince staging an intervention at this point is laughable,” the source said. “You can see from how Trump is behaving that he thinks Reince and Ryan don’t have many chips now that the convention has past. Trump doesn’t think he needs them anymore.”

Still, the pressure from Priebus and others already seems to be having an impact.

Manafort hinted that Trump would be far more focused on prosecuting his case against Clinton at his rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Wednesday afternoon. But that focus was short-lived.

After beginning his remarks by declaring his campaign had “never been more unified” and turning quickly to the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran, Trump suddenly and without prompting, began relitigating and again attempting to explain some of the indelicate comments that have dogged him for months. He revisited his remark about Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her ... wherever” during a debate she moderated last summer (Trump said Wednesday he was referring to her nose) and his apparent mockery of a New York Times’ reporter’s disability. And he blamed the controversies on the news media.

“The biggest problem we have is a dishonest press. Dishonest press,” he said. “You know, it’s so dishonest. It’s the single biggest problem we have in terms of victory, because they put a false spin on everything.”

The campaign released fundraising numbers on Wednesday in an effort to change the subject. It is also expanding its media team, hoping that a presence on the TV commercial airwaves will help Trump drive home a consistent message — something that has eluded him so far in the general election.

According to two sources, the campaign has brought on Larry Weitzner, a veteran ad man who has worked for the likes of Christie and former New York Gov. George Pataki, to help craft TV commercials. He joins Rick Reed, who helped oversee the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth offensive against John Kerry in 2004 on the Trump media team. Neither Weitzner nor the Trump campaign responded to requests for comment.

While Hillary Clinton has launched TV commercials in a number of battleground states, Trump has yet to begin doing so.

But scattered signs of campaign expansion and a modicum of discipline from the candidate may not be enough to placate angry Republicans after a week of unforced errors. “Some Republicans are close to bailing,” said Haynes. “At a certain point, people are going to say it’s more important that something is left of the Republican Party than stopping Hillary Clinton. And it’s getting close to that point.”

Ari Fleischer, a press secretary in the George W. Bush White House, said Trump’s repeated calamities have “made it harder for people like me to be for him.” But he still intends to support the New York businessman over Clinton.

“Donald Trump says horribly offensive things that rattle me and bother me deeply. Hillary Clinton has done horribly bad things in terms of her personal ethics, in terms of her governmental ethics,” he said. “Trump has done it with his words. She’s done it with her deeds.”

Shane Goldmacher, Kenneth Vogel, Kyle Cheney and Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.

