Donald Trump is still devoting a baffling amount of time to fighting his own party


Donald Trump is done playing nice, and he doesn't seem to care which bridges he burns as a result. Over the past several weeks, the Republican nominee has increasingly distanced himself from his own party members, and they from him. In the last 24 hours alone, Trump attacked House Speaker Paul Ryan by name three times on Twitter, and broke with both Ryan and his own running mate in another tweet.
Trump's tweets don't have much grounding in fact. As Politico pointed out Monday, Ryan has "won with 55 percent or more of the vote every year since 1998. In fact, the 2012 race — where he was the VP nominee — is the only political race he's ever lost ... One Ryan ally told us last night in an email: Trump will lose pretty soon, and Ryan will still be around."
Additionally, both Ryan and Trump's running mate Mike Pence have broken from Trump's opinion that the election will be rigged. Trump "will absolutely accept the result of the election," Pence was forced to reassure Americans this weekend. And in a statement, Ryan clarified he was "fully confident" the election would be carried out honestly.
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Trump lags 39 percent to Hillary Clinton's 45 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, 22 days out from the election.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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