Despite polls from CNN and You.gov that show Donald Trump losing Sunday’s debate, the conventional wisdom holds that he did well enough to stop Republican defections from his campaign and to save his place at the top of the ticket. Look closer, however, and a different reality emerges: The reality TV star isn’t holding on because of his debate performance so much as his campaign’s willingness to openly threaten those who dare to cross him with mutually assured destruction.

These people are willing to destroy the GOP.

Before joining the Trump campaign, one campaign official, Stephen Bannon, openly described his project as follows: “What we need to do is bitch-slap the Republican Party.”

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has apparently reached the conclusion that the best course is threatening down-ballot Republicans if they are not sufficiently loyal—according to The New York Times, she ominously warned on television that “she knew of Republican lawmakers who had behaved inappropriately toward young women, and whose criticism of Mr. Trump was therefore hypocritical.” Says Rod Dreher, “Trump is going to drop those names. You watch.”

Who would be surprised if he did?

She actually went even farther in an interview with Chris Matthews, declaring, “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 … 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.”



To sum up, the GOP nominee’s campaign manager declared on national television that multiple prominent Republicans––some who oppose Trump, and others, apparently, who support him––perpetrated sexual assaults, and she knows their names.