Donald Trump said Sunday that Republican leaders — particularly those who have endorsed him — should now stop bad-mouthing him.
“If people and especially, you know, where people endorse me, Republican leaders, I think that, honestly, they should go about their business and they should do a wonderful job and work on budgets and get the budgets down and get the military the types of money they need and lots of other things. And they shouldn’t be talking so much,” Trump said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “They should go out and do their job. Let me do my job.”
Trump’s remarks come in the wake of chastisements from GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over his criticisms of a federal judge’s Mexican heritage and a revival of an effort to remove the presumptive nominee at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month.
Ryan, who held out for weeks before finally endorsing Trump, has delivered some of the sharpest hits against Trump, calling his comment about Judge Gonzalo Curiel the “textbook definition of a racist comment.” And Ryan provided political cover to other Republicans who have been leery of Trump’s comments, saying they should vote their “conscience” when it comes to supporting the businessman.
Sunday marked the latest threat from Trump to go it alone if other Republicans keep criticizing him. Trump said Saturday during a rally that he may return to self-funding his campaign, a possible switch back to his original position on the issue that won many supporters in the Republican primary but left top Republicans worried about whether he would have enough to compete with Hillary Clinton and support down-ballot Republican candidates.
“Life is like two-way street, right?” Trump had said Saturday. “Otherwise I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing. I’ll just keep funding my own campaign. I’m OK with that. That’s the easy way. I mean for me, that’s the easy way. But, hopefully I can continue to go the way we’re going, and this weekend we raised a lot of money. We’ve raised a lot of money for the Republican Party. We’ll keep doing it, because we do have tremendous support within the party. That I can tell you.”
