Republicans Stage Trump Campaign Intervention

Donald Trump is polling ten points behind Hillary Clinton. It’s only August, and this is a big deficit for the Republican to overcome. Although sixty-one percent of voters think that Hillary Clinton is dishonest, she nonetheless has a large lead over Donald Trump in a Fox News poll. Voters believe that Hillary has the “temperament and knowledge to serve effectively,” while more than half of likely voters think that Trump is not qualified and does not act appropriately to be President.This, coupled with his recent disparaging remarks about Gold Star mother Ghazala Khan, where he commented that she might not have been able to speak because of her religion, has driven some inside the Republican establishment to try to organize an intervention in the Trump campaign.

Representative Richard Hanna of New York broke with party ranks to endorse Clinton, as did Republican fundraiser Meg Whitman, and lifelong Republican and Reagan aide Doug Elmets. NBC News reported that some Republicans began considering either not endorsing Trump or conducting an intervention after several days of controversial comments: the Republican Presidential nominee made remarks against the family of Captain Humayan Khan, a Muslim killed in Iraq, said that he’d always wanted a Purple Heart, and did not endorse Paul Ryan. He also proposed restraining American military aid to NATO countries who had not “paid up.”A Fox News poll found that 70 percent of voters thought his comments about the Khan family were “out of bounds,” and three-quarters were aware of the comments themselves.Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Trump will, in fact, find himself changing the tone of his campaign significantly. “I wouldn’t use the word intervention, because it’s a word to describe what’s done for drug addicts and alcoholics, and Trump is neitr of those two things,” he said. Although he added that “I think you’re going to see Donald Trump campaigning in a somewhat different way going forward.” Donald Trump has come out against the idea of intervention, saying publicly that “there is great unity in my campaign, perhaps greater than ever before.” This is in contrast, however, to Associated Press reporting that the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, may come to Donald Trump with a group of respected Republicans to “confront Trump in the coming days.” The group is said to include Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.