Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the media before a rally on May 26 in Bismarck, North Dakota. | Getty Trump has Republicans squirming with ‘Mexican’ judge attacks The racially based attacks show Trump has no plans to become a more mild general election candidate.

A day before the last GOP primaries on the calendar, Donald Trump has dashed Republicans’ hopes that he would tone down his divisive rhetoric as a general election candidate, as they now race to distance themselves from the billionaire’s latest firestorm.

Trump’s repeated rants smacking around the Mexican heritage of federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the Indiana-born judge who is overseeing two class-action lawsuits against Trump University, show that the real estate mogul has no immediate plans to become the unifying figure he’s promised to be.


And that has Republicans squirming.

"It's completely racist," Joe Scarborough declared at the start of MSNBC's "Morning Joe” on Monday as he then railed against Republicans who have endorsed Trump and who have tried to disavow his racially based attacks on Curiel.

"They can't be morally outraged this week when they knew what he was doing last week,” Scarborough said.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has so far withheld his endorsement, on Monday added to the growing legions of Republicans saying Trump is out of line.

"Attacking judges based on their race &/or religion is another tactic that divides our country. More importantly, it is flat out wrong," Trump's former primary foe said in a two-part Twitter takedown.

“@realDonaldTrump should apologize to Judge Curiel & try to unite this country. #TwoPaths,” he added.

Another of Trump's fallen rivals — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — also weighed in, and shared some sharp words.

Rubio, who has said he'd speak on Trump's behalf at the convention in July, told a local television affiliate on Monday that Trump was "wrong" to question Curiel's fitness based on his ethnic heritage. "That man is an American," Rubio said.

Others offered up a more nuanced take, careful to not alienate their party's nominee. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox News on Monday that "people are disturbed that you would want to try to dismiss a judge based on his ethnicity.”

Appearing later on the same network, Chaffetz conceded that Trump is not his ideal candidate but suggested that he would still support him as the party's nominee. "I can disagree on policy and principles. I disagree with the statements he made there but do I think he would be much better candidate and much better president than Hillary Clinton," Chaffetz said. "You betcha, all day."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), however, called Trump’s remarks “absolutely unacceptable.”

“His statement that Judge Curiel could not rule fairly because of his Mexican heritage does not represent our American values,” Collins said in a statement on Monday (Collins has generally supported the party's nominee, but she has declined to explicitly support Trump so far this year). “Mr. Trump's comments demonstrate both a lack of respect for the judicial system and the principle of separation of powers.”

Trump, meanwhile, is showing no signs of backing down. He ratcheted up his attacks last week when he told the Wall Street Journal that the American judge’s Mexican heritage is “an inherent conflict of interest” because of the billionaire’s proposal to build a massive wall on the southern border.

He went further on Sunday, telling CBS that it’s possible he would have similar concerns with a Muslim judge because of his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

The comments are not out of character for Trump, whose unprecedented rise through the GOP primary was marked by attacks on undocumented Mexican immigrants, Muslims, women and other demographic groups.

But they fly in the face of Republicans who have rested their reluctant endorsements on the premise that Trump will tone it down once he clinched the nomination.

Some of the most awkward moments have come from congressional leaders.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) could not last 24 hours after formally backing Trump in a newspaper column before, unprompted, lashing out at Trump's comments about Curiel. “Look, the comment about the judge the other day just was out of left field for my mind,” Ryan said on Friday. “It’s reasoning I don’t relate to. I completely disagree with the thinking behind that. And so, he clearly says and does things I don’t agree with, and I’ve had to speak up from time to time when that has occurred, and I’ll continue to do that if it’s necessary. I hope it’s not.”

On Sunday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was visibly uncomfortable as he dodged – three times – a direct question on whether Trump’s attacks on Curiel are “racist.”

“I couldn’t disagree more with the statement,” McConnell said each time he was asked by Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.”

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) didn’t try to hide his irritation on ABC on Sunday, saying he thought he was going to be on to talk about foreign policy, not Trump. But he said he did "not condone the comments."

Newt Gingrich, who has largely been supportive of Trump’s candidacy, was more forceful, calling the remarks "inexcusable" and "one of the worst mistakes Trump has made" on Fox on Sunday, comments that stoked the ire of Trump.

"As far as Newt is concerned, I saw Newt," Trump told "Fox & Friends" on Monday after the show played clips of Hillary Clinton and Gingrich denouncing his remarks speculating that Curiel's Mexican heritage represented a conflict of interest in the cases against Trump University over which he is presiding. "I was surprised at Newt. I thought it was inappropriate what he said."

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, which had signaled support for Trump's list of 11 potential Supreme Court judges, also ripped into him for the remarks, pronouncing them at once "merely obnoxious" and "truly odious."

"Apart from his racist implications, Mr. Trump is also indulging in the left’s habit of attributing the motivations of everyone and everything to race, class, gender and sexual orientation," the editorial board trolled on Sunday night. "Claiming that a person’s judgment is determined by his objective circumstances is a Marxist trope. Isn’t Mr. Trump supposed to be running against such thinking?"

While Republicans have spent the past few days tripping over themselves, Democrats have been all too happy to seize of Trump’s comments as just the latest example of his dangerous candidacy.

Clinton's campaign on Monday morning released an 83-second ad featuring comments from several prominent Republicans who have thrown their support behind their party's man.

"[E]ven other Republicans are offended," the on-screen text reads, before cutting to video of Ana Navarro, a CNN contributor and former Jeb Bush surrogate, sharply denouncing Trump for his comments.

The Democratic National Committee blasted out an email to reporters Monday morning featuring snippets of Gingrich, McConnell, Ryan and Kasich.



“Donald Trump’s racist rants are so divisive that even Republican leaders are beginning to stand up and take notice," DNC national press secretary Mark Paustenbach said in a statement. "These divisive and irresponsible comments are just the latest reasons why Donald Trump does not have the temperament to occupy the Oval Office.”

In the face of such criticism, Trump and his surrogates resorted to blaming the media, not necessarily for their coverage of his remarks on Curiel but for an NBC story headlined "Donald Trump does not have a campaign."

"People like @KatyTurNBC report on my campaign, but have zero access. They say what they want without any knowledge.True of so much of media!" Trump tweeted moments after phoning into "Fox & Friends" where he compared himself favorably to Michael Jackson, remarking that he was friends with the pop star and saw others who were not close commenting on his death in 2009. "I said to myself, you know, it's amazing, he didn't even know those people. But it’s like that. The world of politics is a very strange world and people want to get on and they say things. They have no idea what they're talking about, and I watch it and I listen to it all the time."

Trump aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on CNN, and sidestepped pointed questions about Trump’s attacks, remarking that voters would pay more attention to Trump's pledge to secure the border.

"If we have open borders we can't have a country," Huckabee Sanders said. "We have to secure our borders and that is a big priority of Donald Trump and Americans want to secure our borders. It's a national security issue and one that has to be addressed and the only one taking it seriously."

Carl Paladino, an honorary co-chair of Trump's New York campaign, ripped into the notion that Trump is "racist," remarking that the word is always used to "push back on the white guy."

Trump could have focused on a dismal jobs report on Friday, CNN anchor Carol Costello commented to Paladino, who responded by saying that the "press constantly wants to identify what the issues of the day are."

"You don't have that right. He's the one that has to define what the issues of the day are, not the press. You don't have a right to do that. You've been doing it for so long, you think it's OK to do it," Paladino said.

Less than an hour earlier, Trump tweeted about the report that came out three days prior: "A massive blow to Obama's message - only 38,000 new jobs for month in just issued jobs report. That's REALLY bad!"

"That's his entitlement," Paladino said. "He can pick and choose when he wants to talk about an issue."

