Friday, June 3, 2016

First Read: Trump's Takeover of the GOP Is Now Complete

First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.
 
Trump's GOP takeover is now complete

On March 3, Mitt Romney delivered his own blistering speech on Donald Trump, which used some of the same lines of attack that Hillary Clinton included in her anti-Trump address yesterday. "[Trump's] domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill," Romney said back then. But today — exactly three months ago since that speech — Trump's takeover of the Republican Party is now complete, especially after House Speaker Paul Ryan (Romney's 2012 running mate) endorsed the real-estate mogul. Ryan tried to give himself distance by withholding his endorsement for 29 days after Trump became the GOP's presumptive nominee, particularly given their differences over immigration, entitlements, trade, and Trump's Muslim ban. But it's hard to disagree with this take from the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman: "Speaker Paul Ryan endorses nominee who wants to ban Muslims from the country. The hostile takeover of the GOP is now complete." 

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