Growing frustration among Republicans, campaign over Trump’s ongoing feuds

Republican Party leaders and advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign are growing more and more frustrated with the continuing feuds and other erratic behavior by the GOP presidential nominee and the apparent inability of anyone to halt or rein in the magnate’s penchant for generating embarrassing controversy.

As ABC reported on Wednesday, Republican National Committee head Reince Priebus on Tuesday called Trump to express his frustration with the evolution of his campaign and, in particular, with how the mogul has handled the situation with the parents of a U.S. Muslim soldier killed in Iraq.

Meanwhile, according to CNN, part of Trump’s team of advisers, including campaign chief Paul Manafort, “feel like they are wasting their time” in light of the candidate’s recent comments and refusal to drop his feud with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, killed in combat in 2004.

Khizr Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week and attacked Trump for his antiimmigrant and antiMuslim rhetoric and proposals, whereupon Trump launched repeated broadsides at the Khans.

ABC reported that the frustration with Trump among top GOP officials is such that the party is exploring how it would handle a scenario in which the candidate voluntarily drops out of the race and how they might go about replacing him, a procedure covered in the RNC rules and which would be in the hands of the 168 members of that committee.

However, there is no mechanism for the party forcing its presidential nominee to drop out of the race and so far Trump has given no sign that he is thinking about abandoning his White House bid.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller denied in a communique that there are any symptoms of frustration within the magnate’s campaign.

“Our campaign just finished up our strongest month of fundraising to date, we’re adding talented and experienced staffers on a daily basis and Mr. Trump’s turning out bigger, more enthusiastic crowds than Hillary Clinton ever could,” Miller said.

His feud with the Khan family notwithstanding, within the past 24 hours the magnate has provided other examples of unpredictable and unprecedented behavior never before seen in a presidential campaign.

In an interview with The Washington Post published on Tuesday, Trump rejected endorsing the reelection campaigns of two GOP heavyweights who recently have been critical of him: House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain.

Also on Tuesday, Trump expelled a mother and her crying baby from a campaign rally in Ashburn, Virginia.

Meanwhile, Hewlett Packard chief executive Meg Whitman, a toplevel conservative donor, and New York Congressman Richard Hanna have joined the list of GOP figures who have become disenchanted with Trump and have announced that they will support the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the November election.