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Donald Trump Berates Paul Ryan and ‘Disloyal’ Republicans

Donald J. Trump spoke to supporters at a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pa. on Monday. He called House Speaker Paul D. Ryan a “weak and ineffective leader” in a Twitter post on Tuesday.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Donald J. Trump lashed out at Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other critics within his party on Tuesday in a barrage of Twitter posts deriding the highest-ranking Republican as a feckless leader and warning that those who have been disloyal risked handing the election to Hillary Clinton.

The early morning attack escalated the war between the Republican presidential nominee and those party establishment figures who have abandoned him since the emergence of a 2005 video that showed Mr. Trump demeaning women in lurid terms. That was the last straw for Mr. Ryan, who told Republicans in Congress that they should feel free to stop supporting Mr. Trump if they felt it would improve their own prospects on Election Day.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump was still seething over Mr. Ryan’s refusal to stick with him.

Mr. Trump also appeared to be laying the groundwork to blame Mr. Ryan and Republicans who opposed him should he lose the election next month, complaining that it is “hard to do well” without the support of his own party. Democrats, he said, are more loyal to their own kind.

In a mood to settle scores, Mr. Trump also assailed Senator John McCain of Arizona for selling him out. The two men clashed last year when Mr. Trump declared that Mr. McCain, a decorated veteran who was captured and imprisoned in Vietnam, was not a war hero. They later made amends but the relationship unraveled when Mr. McCain denounced Mr. Trump for boasting about sexually assaulting women in the video.

“The very foul-mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!” Mr. Trump wrote in an afternoon post on Twitter.

Mr. Trump has increasingly been trying to fire up his base of supporters by ridiculing Republican leaders and making incendiary allegations against Mrs. Clinton and her husband. At a rally on Monday night, he reiterated his promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Mrs. Clinton if he were elected president, and he warned that if more videos of him exhibiting vulgar behavior became public, he would redouble his attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s family.

The Trump campaign has also released a new advertisement that features footage of Mrs. Clinton having a coughing fit and a scene of her stumbling into a vehicle when she came down with pneumonia last month. Mr. Trump had initially avoided using Mrs. Clinton’s illness against her, but recently mocked her stumble publicly and said it was more evidence that she lacked stamina.

The fallout from the video and Mr. Trump’s more combustible attitude has already shown signs that it is turning off independent voters and women. Christian conservatives, an important segment of the Republican base, have also expressed concern that Mr. Trump has taken his scorched earth approach too far.

“This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider,” Andy Crouch, the executive editor of the evangelical publication Christianity Today, wrote in an editorial published Monday. “The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest — indeed, sexual assault — might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.”

The essay went on to argue that many Christians have been supporting Mr. Trump for strategic reasons, largely based on the notion that he was on their side when it came to social issues and the direction of the Supreme Court, but that ultimately social conservatives could not be blind to Mr. Trump’s behavior.

“Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord,” Mr. Crouch wrote. “They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us — in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.”

However, not everyone is turning against Mr. Trump, with four weeks to go until Election Day. In a speech at Liberty University in Virginia on Monday, Ralph Reed, a prominent evangelical leader, made a forceful case for why Mr. Trump remained a better choice than Mrs. Clinton despite the offensive video that was revealed last week.

And Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who fought bitterly with Mr. Trump during the Republican primary campaign, said on Tuesday that he was not ready to abandon Mr. Trump.

For his part, Mr. Trump suggested on Tuesday that he now felt emboldened by his campaign’s new leadership team and the fact that he was no longer trying to please establishment Republicans by restraining himself.

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

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