Donald Trump endorses House Speaker Paul Ryan, ending a four-day standoff

Donald Trump reversed course yesterday and endorsed House Speaker Paul Ryan for re-election, seeking to end deep divisions within the Republican Party and stem his presidential campaign’s bleeding after several self-inflicted wounds.

Ryan, who has been endorsed by Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, is viewed by establishment Republicans as a possible presidential candidate in the future.

“I see no objective in doing this tit-for-tat petty back-and-forth with Donald Trump, because it serves no goal in my mind”, Ryan said during a radio interview with conservative host Charlie Sykes. He said “Donald Trump and I are standing shoulder to shoulder to say to the American people, ‘We can be strong again'”.

Mr Trump has praised Mr Putin as a great leader, and taken policy positions “consistent with Russian, not American, interests”, including endorsing Russian espionage against United States figures like Mrs Clinton, Mr Morell said.

But “where that line is, I don’t know”, he said on Friday. “I’m not quite there yet”. “I am not going to try to psychoanalyze this stuff”, Ryan told Jay Weber of WISN as part of a lengthy slate of local radio interviews Ryan was doing Thursday and Friday in advance of next Tuesday’s primary elections.

Trump has praised Putin as a great leader, and taken policy positions “consistent with Russian, not American, interests”, including endorsing Russian espionage against USA figures like Clinton, Morell said.

Earlier this week, Trump said he was “not quite there yet” when it came to endorsing Ryan.

Mr Nehlen said Mr Trump’s decision “is appropriate and is a display of true leadership”. “He said he’s going to work with Paul Ryan”.

Trump’s sniping came during a week of plummeting poll numbers that have put even some solidly Republican states, such as Georgia, in play. His Republican primary challenger, businessman Paul Nehlen, did attend, according to a spokesman.

After knocking himself off message repeatedly in recent weeks, stoking one controversy after the next, Trump, reading at times from prepared remarks on his podium, latched onto voters’ concerns about Clinton’s trustworthiness and honesty, and sought to amplify the controversies that have beset the Democrat’s campaign. But Trump’s move drew a heavy rebuke from Wisconsin Republicans, with Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos saying he was “embarrassed” to have Trump as the nominee in an op-ed published Friday.

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania says Donald Trump should be making the case against Hillary Clinton “rather than getting involved in other unrelated discussions”.

In it, Vos warned that, “If Donald Trump wants to have a chance to win in November, he should start following Paul Ryan’s lead, not criticizing him”, and suggested that Wisconsin’s activists and operatives would be reluctant to work or vote for Trump if he kept up the feud with Ryan. John McCain and Kelly Ayotte.

During a rally in Iowa, he branded her a “pathological” liar for her contortions about her emails and said the former secretary of state is “close to unhinged”.

Ryan has criticized Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the USA and said it was racist for him to suggest that a judge’s Mexican ancestry made it impossible for him to be impartial in a civil fraud suit against Trump.