Before he demeaned, guaranteed and taunted his way to the top of the polls -- indeed, before the very first “Make America Great” hat even came off of the assembly line -- the Republican Party got its first incontrovertible evidence of the extent of its problem with Donald Trump, via a report in The Washington Post.
It started harmlessly enough. In early July, The Post cited unnamed Republican donors and consultants in reporting on a phone conversation that Trump had with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Trump had launched his candidacy three weeks earlier with a barrage of insults against illegal immigrants that had stopped just short of asking Congress to declare Mexican-American War II, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that the head of the party whose nomination he was seeking might want to convey some concern.
According to the Post’s account, the description of which the RNC confirmed at the time, Priebus called Trump and urged him to “tone it down."
In another time and with another candidate, that would have been the end of it. The Republican Party’s referee had stepped in to rein in one of its combatants for doling out low blows. What the RNC didn’t count on, however, was that Trump was fighting an entirely different kind of bout. Not only would Trump continue fighting however he wanted, he was about to head-butt the referee for good measure.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
