If RNC cuts me off, I’ll stop funding them

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus introduced Donald Trump at a Friday afternoon rally, a show of unity with the GOP nominee as he struggles in the polls.

“The Republican National Committee has acknowledged the possibility of redirecting its resources, but a spokesperson says Priebus did not explicitly convey that possibility to Trump in that phone conversation”, the TIME update said.

A draft of the letter, obtained by various USA news organizations, warns that the Republican presidential candidate’s “divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide”.

As Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to struggle, many top party donors are putting their resources into Senate and House races in the hopes of keeping control of Congress amid an increasingly hard political environment for the party.

As he skips from one gaffe to the next, GOP leaders in Washington and in the most competitive states have begun openly contemplating turning their backs on their party’s presidential nominee to prevent what they fear will be wide-scale Republican losses on Election Day.

Trump responded to the letter Thursday night, telling Fox News, “If it is true, that’s okay too because all I have to do is stop funding the Republican Party …” The party hopes that he can control some more of his incendiary remarks, but still have that outsider appeal, which they think is really Trump’s really only path to the White House, to make these swing voters and working-class voters who are disengaged with the system feel like they maybe have a candidate for themselves.

While Cruz made an appearance at the RNC, a few of Trump’s defeated primary rivals skipped the big Cleveland event, including the governor of The Buckeye State John Kasich.

If people in the campaign are, in fact, “doing all the right things” it isn’t readily apparent and that can’t all be blamed on Trump’s off-message moments.

Trump’s campaign has placed strong emphasis on winning Pennsylvania, which last went for a Republican candidate in 1988.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Robert, we have seen more – or at least a number of prominent Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of ME come out and say they couldn’t support Donald Trump.

“Don’t believe the garbage you read”, he continued.

Other black conservative voters say they are voting for Trump because of all the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails and Benghazi.

“Generally there is a sense that Trump is his own guy – that he’s his own brand and not a dyed-in-the-wool Republican”, Prior said.

Many Republicans in contentious congressional races are openly distancing themselves from Trump.

The dissension in the Republican ranks hasn’t affected Mr Trump’s ability to draw supporters to his rallies.

The Trump campaign and the media are kidding themselves if they believe that they have a lot of time left to turn it around. “She lied when she said that she only had one device”. The letter said they include his spat with the parents of a Muslim Army captain who was killed in Iraq, calling on Russian Federation to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, showing a “total ignorance” of foreign policy and “deliberately and repeatedly lying about scores of issues, large and small”.