WASHINGTON – Big-name GOP leaders piled on Friday against Donald Trump in an extraordinary show of Republican-vs.-Republican discontent over his winning the party’s presidential nomination. Trump just shrugged it off, declaring they didn’t really matter when compared to all the voters who turned out to vote for him in this year’s primary elections.
Trump grudgingly agreed to meet next week with Paul Ryan, the Republican House speaker whose statement a day earlier – he said he was not ready to embrace Trump’s nomination – set off the intraparty fireworks. Trump said he had “no idea” if they would patch things up and it wasn’t all that important anyway.
“The thing that matters most are the millions of people that have come out to vote for me and give me a landslide victory in almost every state,” Trump said moments after Ryan, the nation’s highest-ranking Republican officeholder, announced their planned meeting.
Later in the day, two of Trump’s vanquished GOP rivals, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and South Carolina Sen.Lindsey Graham, said they would not vote for him in November. That was a startling rejection by party leaders.
Trump said of Ryan’s stance: “I figured, routinely, he would be behind me. The other day, he pulled a big surprise.”