Donald Trump’s behavior over the last week has been so poor, more and more prominent members of his party are turning against him.
Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the House who for a time was thought to be Trump’s top pick for vice president, said the nominee was being “very self-destructive” to his campaign in an interview today (Aug. 3) with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “Trump is still behaving like as though it was the primaries and there were 17 candidates. He has not made the transition to being the potential president of the United States, which is a much tougher league.”
Gingrich refers to a number of incidents over the last few days that have garnered Trump some less-than-favorable coverage in the press.
On Saturday (July 30), Trump lashed out at Khizr and Ghazala Khan, vocal critics of Trump and the parents of Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq in 2004, in an interview with ABC News. “Who wrote that? Did Hillary’s script writers write it?” he said of Khizr’s speech at the DNC last week, before implying that Ghazala may not have been “allowed” to speak at the convention because of her faith.
And on Tuesday (Aug. 2), he ordered a mother and crying baby be removed from one of his rallies: “You can get the baby out of here. I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking.”
Trump has also taken a swipe at Republican figureheads whom he says have not been supportive enough of his run for president, including New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, speaker of the House and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, and Arizona senator John McCain.
“He doesn’t get to say ‘you’re fired,’” Gingrich concluded on Trump in his interview with Fox. “The American people get to say, ‘you’re fired.’ So he’s really got to take a deep breath … I would say that in the last couple weeks, he has been remarkably underperforming.”