Hancock GOP dispels rumor, says it supports Trump

Party officials in Arizona and Georgia say Clinton campaign lieutenants told them Monday that the Democratic nominee would start spending money on staff in the two states, which combine for 27 electoral votes, a tenth of the total needed to win the presidency.

Susan Collins is the latest high-profile Republican to announce she can not support her party’s presidential nominee this fall.

“I will not be voting for Donald Trump for president”, the centrist GOP lawmaker wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “But Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country”. Days after rebuking Trump for insinuating Somali refugees in ME were risky, Collins said late Monday she’d thought “long and hard” about whether she was obligated to support the GOP nominee and decided she could not. Some other prominent local Republicans also did not attend the convention.

On Monday evening, Trump wrote on Twitter that “many people are saying that the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails”, referring to an Iranian nuclear scientist executed for spying for the U.S. Clinton’s spokesman tweeted back that Trump was making it up. Clinton has opened up a lead in the high single digits in most polls. One media outlet began a Donald Trump- Mike Pence divergence tracker to highlight his difference with his running mate.

“I have a lot of concerns about Hillary Clinton, and I am not going to support her”, she said. Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, the most vulnerable GOP senator up for re-election in November, withdrew his announcement in the wake of Trump’s Curiel comments and is even running an ad about how he “bucked his party”.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) – the non-partisan body that has organized and planned presidential debates in every election cycle since 1988 – announced its debate schedule for the 2016 race more than a year ago, in September 2015, planning the events on Sept. 26, Oct. 9 and Oct. 19, and one vice presidential debate, on Oct. 4.