Trump tries to reassure Republican supporters

Combined dispatches

BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y.

Donald Trump ended one of his toughest days of the campaign by doing something he rarely does: reading a prime-time speech from a teleprompter.

The 17-minute address, delivered Tuesday to supporters at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester, was designed to reassure the GOP, with a promise to fight special interests and deliver a major broadside attack on Hillary Clinton next week.

“I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle,” Trump said Tuesday. “And I will never ever let you down.”

The party was in full panic Tuesday over how to deal with a candidate who appeared uninterested in the advice of party leaders and some in his own campaign.

“I will make you proud of our party and our movement,” Trump said.

Trump only alluded to some of the controversy he has engendered in recent days by attacking a federal judge of Mexican descent, and the questions that have arisen within his party about his temperament.

Leading Republicans united Tuesday in an extraordinary denunciation of Trump’s attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, with House Speaker Paul Ryan calling them the “textbook definition of a racist comment” though he stood by his endorsement of the presumptive presidential nominee.

Trump asserted that his comments were being “misconstrued” but did not back down or apologize for saying repeatedly that Judge Curiel could not preside fairly over a case involving Trump University because of his Mexican heritage.

“I do not feel that one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial,” Trump said in a lengthy statement that repeated his claims that students at Trump University, far from being fleeced as some claim and as evidence suggests, were overwhelmingly satisfied.

Moments before Trump issued his defiant statement, a GOP senator who previously had indicated support for Trump withdrew his backing, as Republicans’ attempts to unite behind Trump looked at risk of unraveling.

“While I oppose the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump’s latest statements, in context with past attacks on Hispanics, women and the disabled like me, make it certain that I cannot and will not support my party’s nominee for president regardless of the political impact on my candidacy or the Republican Party,” Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who is in a competitive re-election race, said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Republicans were squirming over what might have been the billionaire’s most incendiary stance to date – the claim that Judge Curiel couldn’t preside fairly over the Trump University case because the U.S.-born judge is of Mexican heritage and Trump wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

“I regret those comments he made. Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” Ryan said at a morning news conference where his attempts to focus on a new House GOP poverty-fighting agenda were overwhelmed by questions about Trump. “I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”