Trump endorses House Speaker Paul Ryan

Sarah Palin reiterated her support for Paul Ryan’s primary challenger Friday night immediately after her political ally, Donald Trump, endorsed the House speaker. But in neighboring Wisconsin, a state Trump insists he can win, the state’s best-known Republicans said they were too busy to attend his evening event. Kelly Ayotte, with whom he has also sparred, calling her “a rising star”.

“In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation”, wrote Morell, who served presidents in both parties over the past three decades.

Ryan, the top USA elected Republican, had no plans to attend the event, in a sign of lingering frictions between the pair.

Trump told the Washington Post earlier this week he likes Ryan, “But these are terrible times for our country”.

Mr Ryan, who was earlier endorsed by Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, Mike Pence, is viewed by establishment Republicans as a possible presidential candidate in the future. His timing was a bit curious, competing with the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Ms Clinton’s lead over Mr Trump narrowed to less than 3 percentage points, down from almost 8 points on Monday. The group relies heavily on hedge fund managers and investment bankers, a group Trump has railed against.

In addition, Trump plans to release his framework for boosting the US economy in a speech in Detroit on Monday, an event that will offer him a chance to avoid theatrics and to detail how he would handle economic issues if elected. He defended himself against her charge that he is temperamentally unfit for the White House.

‘I hope you will compare what I’m proposing to what my husb-.my opponent is talking about, ‘ Clinton said. “Because I think our country is at a crossroads election”, Clinton said.

“You would think we’d ought to be focusing on Hillary Clinton and all of her deficiencies”, Ryan said.

The letter, released exclusively to The Eagle-Tribune on the eve of Trump’s rally in Windham, details the ways in which Clinton’s economic policy would benefit veterans through the expansion of tax credits for veterans’ employment, strengthening veteran entrepreneurship programs and other, more broad economic plans, such as her plan to create 10.4 million new jobs in her first term.

She addressed two of the largest issues that continue to dog her campaign: the controversy over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state during the Obama administration, and continuing scepticism among voters about her trustworthiness.

Clinton conceded that she had “short-circuited” earlier in the week in interviews when she had asserted that Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey had concluded that she had been truthful in her statements about use of the private server. “She’s actually not strong enough to be president”.

Ryan said he didn’t want to get drawn into “hypotheticals” but said, “None of these things are ever blank checks. She’s the devil”, the Republican presidential nominee said. “I take it seriously”, she said. “I’m going to work my heart out in this campaign and as president to produce results for people, to get the economy to work for everybody, not just (for) those at the top, to do as much as I can to help people who, as I said earlier, may not even vote for me”.

Since then, Trump has engaged in a days-long feud with the family of an American soldier killed in Iraq and squabbled with the Republican leadership over his comments and leadership turmoil within his campaign. “We are Ryan Republicans here in Wisconsin, not Trump Republicans”. Trump could lose all those states, along with Nevada, where a Democratic-held seat is vacant; if Republicans can’t prevail in Senate races nonetheless, they will lose their Senate majority.

Mr Trump’s refusal to back Mr Ryan had been seen by many as a final straw.