Donald
J. Trump at a campaign rally in West Virginia last week. In an
interview broadcast Sunday, he said of Paul D. Ryan: “I’d like to have
his support. But if he doesn’t want to support me, that’s fine, and we
have to go about it.”Credit Ty Wright for The New York Times
Updated, 9:56 a.m. | Donald
J. Trump said he would not rule out an effort to remove Representative
Paul D. Ryan as chairman of the Republican National Convention if he did
not endorse Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
Mr. Trump stopped
short of calling for Mr. Ryan, the speaker of the House, to step down
from his convention role. But in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s
“Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump said there could be consequences in the
event that Mr. Ryan continued withholding his support.
“I will give you a
very solid answer, if that happens, about one minute after that happens,
O.K.?” Mr. Trump said. “There’s no reason to give it right now, but
I’ll be very quick with the answer.”
Mr. Trump has shown
little interest over the last few days in placating his critics inside
the party, including Mr. Ryan. Mr. Ryan, a representative from
Wisconsin, said on Thursday that he was not ready to endorse Mr. Trump,
citing reservations about his political style and policy agenda. The
two men are scheduled to meet privately in Washington next week.
But on “Meet the
Press,” Mr. Trump struck a dismissive tone toward Mr. Ryan and responded
with outright hostility to other Republican critics who have refused to
back his campaign.
Jeb Bush,
he said, was “not honorable” for breaking his promise to endorse the
party’s nominee. Mitt Romney, he said, was “ungrateful” for the help Mr.
Trump gave him in the 2012 election. Mr. Trump referred to Lindsey
Graham, the South Carolina senator who said Friday he would never vote
for Mr. Trump, as “this lightweight.”
Of Mr. Ryan, he said:
“I’d like to have his support. But if he doesn’t want to support me,
that’s fine, and we have to go about it.”
Asked about Mr.
Trump’s remarks on the convention, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr.
Ryan, replied, “The speaker looks forward to meeting with Mr. Trump on
Thursday.”
Other allies of Mr. Trump have gone further in criticizing Mr. Ryan for declining to issue an immediate endorsement.
Sarah Palin, the
former Alaska governor, predicted in an interview on CNN’s “State of the
Union” that Mr. Ryan would be “Cantored,” a reference to former
Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, who was in line to be speaker of
the House before losing re-election in a Republican primary in 2014.
Correction: May 8, 2016 An
earlier version of this article misstated the year that former
Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia lost in a Republican primary. It
was 2014, not 2015.
Hillary
Clinton speaking in Oakland, Calif., on Friday. She said on Sunday the
F.B.I. had not requested a meeting with her about her use of a private
email server.Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Hillary Clinton said
Sunday that the F.B.I. had not asked to interview her as part of
its inquiry into her use of a personal email server as secretary of
state. But Mrs. Clinton reiterated on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that she
would make herself available to law enforcement officials as necessary.
The investigation into
Mrs. Clinton’s email practices and her handling of classified
intelligence has shadowed her presidential campaign, and CNN reported last week that she was likely to be interviewed soon by the F.B.I.
Mrs. Clinton said on
Sunday that no meeting had been requested or scheduled. “No one has
reached out to me yet,” she said, adding, “I made it clear that I’m more
than ready to talk to anybody, anytime, and I’ve encouraged all of my
assistants to be very forthcoming.”
As she has done in the
past, Mrs. Clinton said she had erred in setting up a private email
server but said she “always took classified material seriously.”
But Mrs. Clinton also
sought to turn around the scrutiny she was facing, arguing that it was
time for the Republican candidate Donald J. Trump to face similar
examination. Mr. Trump, she noted, had not released his tax returns, as
is customary for presidential candidates.
Mr. Trump has said he is being audited and that it would be improper to release his taxes until that process is complete.
That explanation, Mrs. Clinton said, “just by any analysis, doesn’t hold up.”
Keeping up her
campaign’s drumbeat of criticism against Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton said
she considered Mr. Trump’s policy views — including his endorsement of
torture, his description of climate science as a hoax perpetrated by
China and his “cavalier” ideas about nuclear weapons — to be outlandish.
Mrs. Clinton said she
had received an influx of interest from Republicans in recent days, as
the party’s reservations about installing Mr. Trump in the presidency
sink in.
“When you have former
presidents, when you have high-ranking Republican officials in Congress
raising questions about their nominee,,” she said, “I don’t think it’s
personal so much as rooted in their respect for the office and their
deep concern about what kind of leader he would be.”
Senator
John McCain of Arizona at the Capitol in Washington in February. He
said Donald J. Trump needed to “heal many of the wounds” of the primary
season.Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times
Senator John McCain of
Arizona called on Donald J. Trump to make amends to veterans for
his belittling comments about prisoners of war and suggested he would be
unlikely to appear on a stage with Mr. Trump until that happened.
Mr. McCain has
committed to supporting Mr. Trump as the Republican nominee for
president. But in an interview that aired on CNN’s “State of the Union”
on Sunday, Mr. McCain expressed deep dismay at the tenor of the
Republican presidential race, saying Mr. Trump make amends to “a body of
American heroes” he had offended.
Mr. McCain, who was
the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, told CNN that he was
personally indifferent to Mr. Trump’s ridicule but that he could not
abide the affront to veterans in general. Asked if he would appear on
the campaign trail with Mr. Trump, Mr. McCain said “a lot of things
would have to happen” first.
“I think it’s
important for Donald Trump to express his appreciation for veterans
— not John McCain, but veterans who were incarcerated as prisoners of
war,” Mr. McCain said. “When he said, ‘I don’t like people who were
captured,’ then there’s a body of American heroes that I’d like to see
him retract that statement — not about me, but about the others.”
Mr. McCain’s comments
add to the already extraordinary pressure on Mr. Trump to mend his
relationships across the Republican Party and win over a range of party
leaders he has alienated in the 2016 campaign. One of Mr. McCain’s
closest friends in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has
already announced that he will not vote for Mr. Trump under any
circumstances.
Mr. McCain said it was
incumbent on Mr. Trump to “heal many of the wounds” from the primary
season. The senator said the “personalization” of the 2016 race was like
nothing he had ever seen, “where people’s integrity and character are
questioned.”
Noting the rift that
had opened in the Republican Party, Mr. McCain said the party’s leaders
had lost touch with many voters in Mr. Trump’s constituency — mainly, he
said, older, white, blue-collar workers who see no job prospects.
“There is some
distance, if not a disconnect, between party leadership and members of
Congress,” Mr. McCain said,“and many of the voters who have selected
Donald Trump to be the nominee of the party.”
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