Unshackled Trump declares war on GOP 'It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me,' the Republican nominee tweets after Ryan abandoned him.

Backed by some of his fiercest allies and with little left to lose politically, Donald Trump on Tuesday stepped up his attacks on House Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP establishment that has suddenly and decisively turned its back on him.

“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, an indication that his already bruising presidential campaign would be shedding whatever gloves remained in the election’s final month.


Once reluctant partners with the shared mission of keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House, Ryan and Trump are now public enemies, with the Manhattan billionaire accusing the House speaker on Twitter of being “very weak and ineffective.”

Those attacks followed Ryan’s decision a day earlier to abandon Trump, telling GOP lawmakers during a conference call that he will not campaign with the Republican nominee, nor will he defend him. POLITICO reported on Tuesday morning that it’s still possible Ryan will entirely yank his endorsement.

“Despite winning the second debate in a landslide (every poll), it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support!” Trump wrote on Twitter earlier Tuesday morning, adding an hour later that “our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.”

He kept it going, essentially declaring war on the GOP. “With the exception of cheating Bernie out of the nom the Dems have always proven to be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans!” Trump later tweeted, following up that blast, with, “Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win - I will teach them!”

The speaker’s move came amid the Trump campaign’s latest and direst crisis, one that began Friday when The Washington Post published a 2005 recording in which the former reality TV star uses vulgar language in describing women. In the recording, Trump describes how his celebrity status allowed him to commit sexual assault against women with impunity.

“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump can be heard saying on the recording. “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

That Trump performed relatively well at Sunday night’s presidential debate seemed to do little for Ryan, who told House Republicans on the Monday conference call that they should “do what’s best for you in your district” when it comes to supporting the party’s nominee.

Trump’s Republican adversaries were not the only targets of the newly unchained nominee. Returning to a line of attack that Trump’s team put on the back burner a month ago, the real estate mogul’s campaign on Tuesday released a fresh attack ad targeting Clinton’s health, filled with images and video of Clinton coughing, requiring help up a set of stairs and nearly swooning as she makes her way into a van. “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have the fortitude, strength or stamina to lead in our world,” the narrator declares, highlighting foreign policy challenges.

“Donald Trump will protect you,” reads a message on the screen as the candidate’s voice declares his approval for this message. “He is the only one who can.”

Although Ryan is likely the biggest GOP name to abandon Trump, he is far from the only prominent Republican to do so. The House speaker joined a swelling wave of deserters that includes Sens. John McCain, John Thune and Kelly Ayotte, Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Mia Love, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Katrina Pierson, Trump’s campaign spokesman and a cable news surrogate, said the schism within the Republican Party has been cracking for years, even if it has only recently broken open. Its source, Pierson said, is the cowardice of GOP party leaders.

“This ‘civil war,’ as you want to call it, in the Republican Party did not begin last week,” she told CNN. “This has been ongoing for at least the last eight years, because you have leadership who always wants to run at any sign of controversy, whereas the people of the party want to continue to fight, and that’s one of the reasons that Donald Trump became the nominee.”

One lawmaker remaining in Trump’s corner is Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who in an interview with CNN’s “New Day” said the 2005 remarks were indefensible but added, “I wouldn’t say none of us have [made similar statements] back in college years.” Still, he said remaining loyal to his party’s nominee “is not a hard decision” because of the unacceptable alternative offered by Clinton. That so many Republicans have bailed on Trump is a “mistake,” King said.

“I’m hearing from some of my Republican colleagues and some of the leadership that they’re not really telling me how they’re going to vote. They just say they’re not going to actively support and campaign for Donald Trump. I think that’s a mistake. I think that drags the entire ticket down,” he said. “I would ask them on the other side of this argument, what does it do to your integrity if you help Hillary Clinton become president?”

King’s fear, that abandoning the top of the Republican ticket could create a wave that washes out the chance for GOP majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, appeared buttressed by a poll released Monday showing Clinton with an 11-point nationwide lead over Trump. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, conducted entirely after the release of the 2005 recordings but before Sunday’s debate, seemed to confirm for some Republicans the long-held fear that Trump’s candidacy could be damaging long after Election Day.

The latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, conducted after the debate, showed Clinton with a 5-point lead over Trump among likely voters, 42 percent to 37 percent.

Trump’s onetime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, now a paid contributor on CNN, dismissed Ryan’s distancing and said the speaker’s support wasn’t a necessity for Trump. Lewandowski said the speaker, who endorsed Trump on the premise that a Republican in the White House is necessary for the passage of Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda, “has not really been a steadfast supporter of Donald Trump.”

“What Paul Ryan has done is made his career in Washington, D.C., and that’s perfectly acceptable, but this is about a change election,” Lewandowski said on CNN. “And if you’re going to bring change to Washington, you want an outsider. And Paul Ryan for his entire adult political career has been inside Washington, D.C., and, unfortunately, Washington has failed.”

“I think you need the people. I think you need the people who are going to show up and vote,” he continued. “The closer you get to the people who are actually voting every day and supporting Donald Trump, that’s where the power is.”

In particular, Lewandowski dismissed McCain’s distancing as little more than the Arizona senator maneuvering after a primary race in which he was challenged by an ardent Trump supporter. Now in general election mode, the former Trump campaign manager said McCain is being “politically expedient” by disavowing his party’s nominee. Trump, for his part, labeled McCain a hypocrite over his desertion.

“The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!” Trump tweeted Tuesday afternoon.

In a debate Monday night against Democratic challenger Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, McCain said it was Trump’s remarks about women that finally pushed him over the edge and away from the mogul.

“When Mr. Trump attacks women and demeans the women in our nation and in our society, that is a point where I just have to part company,” McCain said in the debate. “It’s not pleasant for me to renounce the nominee of our party. He won the nomination fair and square. But this is — I have daughters. I have friends. I have so many wonderful people on my staff. They cannot be degraded and demeaned in that fashion.”

