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More Than 100 Republicans Urge RNC To Drop Donald Trump

More Than 100 Republicans Urge RNC To Drop Donald Trump
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio August 15, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
ERIC THAYER / Reuters
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio August 15, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

WASHINGTON ― More than 100 GOP officials, delegates and staffers have signed an open letter calling on the Republican National Committee to cut ties with Donald Trump and shift precious resources away from his struggling presidential campaign to focus on retaining the House and Senate.

“We believe that Donald Trump’s divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence, and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide, and only the immediate shift of all available RNC resources to vulnerable Senate and House races will prevent the GOP from drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck,” the letter states.

Reps. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), who have both said they won’t vote for Trump in November, are among those who have signed the letter that began circulating last week. So are 27 former RNC staffers from several departments of the organization, including communications, political coalitions, digital strategy, press and political information.

The two-page letter, which is scheduled to be delivered to the RNC on Tuesday, mentions some of Trump’s greatest hits and accuses him of running a campaign of “anger and exclusion.”

“Those recent outrages have built on his campaign of anger and exclusion, during which he has mocked and offended millions of voters, including the disabled, women, Muslims, immigrants, and minorities,” it reads. “He also has shown dangerous authoritarian tendencies, including threats to ban an entire religion from entering the country, order the military to break the law by torturing prisoners, kill the families of suspected terrorists, track law-abiding Muslim citizens in databases, and use executive orders to implement other illegal and unconstitutional measures.”

The organizer of the effort, Andrew Weinstein, previously worked on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign and served as deputy press secretary to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The letter is just the latest sign of a party divided over its nominee. Trump’s antics have prompted mass defections over the last month. Most recently, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced she could not vote for Trump, citing his attacks against a Gold Star family, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and an American judge of Hispanic descent. The RNC has similarly seen a number of defections, particularly Hispanic staffers.

It is hard to envision the RNC breaking with its nominee at this time. The party’s congressional leaders, for example, are still on record as supporting Trump. But a break would prove absolutely devastating to the businessman’s campaign, which lacks a substantial ground game and data operation.

Trump, for his part, has in recent weeks heaped praise on RNC Chair Reince Priebus, repeatedly calling him a “good man” whose staff is doing a “great job.”

Read the GOP letter below:

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.