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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
By ASHLEY PARKER and MAGGIE HABERMANJUNE 11, 2016
Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, at an event for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in February. On Friday, Ms. Whitman compared Donald J. Trump to Hitler and Mussolini during a Republican retreat in Utah. CreditCheryl Senter for The New York Times
A tenuous peace in the upper echelons of the Republican Party showed signs of unraveling this weekend as a major donor compared Donald J. Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, Mr. Trump and Mitt Romney reignited their feud, and one of Mr. Trump’s aides took a shot at an important campaign ally.
Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a major contributor to Republican candidates, railed against Mr. Trump on Friday at a closed-door meeting of Republicans in Park City, Utah, comparing him to the Axis leaders, according to several people in attendance who declined to be identified because the discussion was private.
The comments, first reported by The Washington Post, came at Mr. Romney’s annual retreat of Republican donors, leaders and business executives. Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and the divisions it is causing among leading Republicans, was an undercurrent of the gathering. Mr. Romney has been outspoken in his refusal to support Mr. Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, even as other party figures have grudgingly fallen into line.
No one has personified the party’s divisions like Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, and the pressure on him intensified this weekend. At the Utah retreat on Friday, Campbell Brown, a former CNN anchor, pressed Mr. Ryan on his decision to support Mr. Trump, according to an attendee, saying she did not know how to explain it to her children.
Then, on Saturday, Dan Scavino Jr., a senior adviser and the social media director for the Trump campaign, criticized Mr. Ryan on Twitter, linking to an article on a conservative website that accused him of harming his party, complete with the headline “Paul Ryan Is the Reason the G.O.P. Is Losing America.”
The discord appeared to bring a quick end to a period of relative peace in the party that began Tuesday when Mr. Trump issued a statement in which he backed away, slightly, from remarks accusing a federal judge of being biased against him because of the judge’s Mexican heritage. Mr. Trump did not apologize but said his remarks had been “misconstrued.”
Later that night, after the final primaries of the presidential race, he gave a restrained speech in which he refrained from offending anyone.
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Presidential Election 2016[/paste:font]
Here’s the latest news and analysis of the candidates and issues shaping the presidential race.
The new approach did not last long. By the end of the week, he hadresumed referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who has called Mr. Trump a “racist bully,” as “Pocahontas” because of her claims during her Senate bid that she had Native American heritage, which has not been proved.
“Somebody said to me, one of the media, ‘Mr. Trump, would you apologize?’” Mr. Trump said at a rally on Saturday in Tampa, Fla. “I said, ‘Yes, I’ll apologize — to Pocahontas, I will apologize!’ Because Pocahontas is insulted.”
Mr. Trump also attacked Mr. Romney, calling him “a choker” and saying he “didn’t work like he should have worked” when he was the nominee in 2012. Once Mr. Romney lost, Mr. Trump added, he should have gone “off into the sunset.”
“You don’t sit there jealous and sick to your stomach,” he said.
A day earlier, Mr. Romney, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, said he feared that Mr. Trump’s election would lead to “trickle-down racism” that would “change the character of the generations of Americans that are following.”
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, gently chided Mr. Romney on Twitter on Friday, writing, “Respect Mitt and differences but couldn’t disagree more.”
Adding that the Supreme Court was “too important to lose for generations,” Mr. Priebus ended his post, “Let’s stop this and unify.”
Mr. Trump and the party have gotten a late start on fund-raising for the general election and need as many of the party’s reliable donors as they can attract. At Mr. Romney’s donor retreat on Saturday, Mr. Priebus was more pointed, telling donors opposed to Mr. Trump that the party would “win with or without you,” according to an attendee present for his remarks.
A representative for Ms. Whitman did not respond Saturday to a request for an interview about her comments. Ms. Whitman, according to one of the people present, did not stop at comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. She also warned the gathering that if Republicans compromised on their principles to win an important election, they would be entering fraught territory.
“What happens next time?” she asked, implying that it could lead to more compromises and more candidates like Mr. Trump.
Ms. Whitman, who ran for governor of California in 2010 and was a finance co-chairwoman for Mr. Romney in 2012, was part of a group of major donors who tried to stop Mr. Trump during the primaries through paid advertising. She has been explicit about her disdain for him.
“Look at the comments he’s made about women, about Muslims, about reporters,” she told CNBC in March. “It’s just repugnant.”
The group at the retreat represented a mix of the Republican Party, divided between those who have said they cannot support Mr. Trump, like Mr. Romney, and those who have tepidly endorsed him, like Mr. Ryan, who was Mr. Romney’s running mate in 2012.
In an emailed statement, Mr. Trump dismissed Ms. Whitman’s comments. “I never met Meg Whitman, but the job she is doing at Hewlett Packard is not a very good one,” Mr. Trump said. “Based on the disastrous campaign she ran in California, and the tens of millions of dollars she wasted, I have learned a lot from her. I do not want her support.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions about its social media director’s gibe at Mr. Ryan, which at a minimum showed a lack of message discipline inside the campaign. Whether it would endanger Mr. Ryan’s support of Mr. Trump was not clear; the speaker’s office did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.
He was forced to respond Friday when pressed by Ms. Brown, who now runs an education website and is married to Dan Senor, who was an adviser to Mr. Ryan and to one of Mr. Trump’s primary race rivals, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
Turning to Mr. Ryan during a panel discussion, Ms. Brown told him that one morning, one of her sons, expressing disappointment, had asked why he endorsed Mr. Trump.
What, she asked Mr. Ryan, was she supposed to tell her child?
The attendee present for the exchange said Mr. Ryan appeared slightly rattled but handled the question well. He said Mr. Ryan had explained that while he understood the disagreement among Republicans, he believed that his decision to support Mr. Trump would be better for the Republican Party in the long term.
Mr. Trump, he said, had won with large margins in some of his House members’ districts, and many voters liked and supported the candidate.
Indeed, Mr. Trump ran away with the Republican nomination with the same flamethrowing approach he is using today.
“It’s like what they said about his temper,” said Brett Mohnkern, 29, of Oil City, Pa., who went to Mr. Trump’s rally on Saturday in Pittsburgh. “Tone down for what?”
Still, the attendee who saw the exchange with Mr. Ryan on Friday said the party’s debate over whether to support Mr. Trump was like a family’s struggle with a divorce.
Mr. Ryan, in one of his appearances at the retreat, tried to infuse what little humor he could into the situation. He joked that he had recently told David Copperfield that he wished the magician could make Mr. Ryan disappear from 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/u...-trump-to-fascists-at-republican-retreat.html
Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, at an event for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in February. On Friday, Ms. Whitman compared Donald J. Trump to Hitler and Mussolini during a Republican retreat in Utah. CreditCheryl Senter for The New York Times
A tenuous peace in the upper echelons of the Republican Party showed signs of unraveling this weekend as a major donor compared Donald J. Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, Mr. Trump and Mitt Romney reignited their feud, and one of Mr. Trump’s aides took a shot at an important campaign ally.
Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a major contributor to Republican candidates, railed against Mr. Trump on Friday at a closed-door meeting of Republicans in Park City, Utah, comparing him to the Axis leaders, according to several people in attendance who declined to be identified because the discussion was private.
The comments, first reported by The Washington Post, came at Mr. Romney’s annual retreat of Republican donors, leaders and business executives. Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and the divisions it is causing among leading Republicans, was an undercurrent of the gathering. Mr. Romney has been outspoken in his refusal to support Mr. Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, even as other party figures have grudgingly fallen into line.
No one has personified the party’s divisions like Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, and the pressure on him intensified this weekend. At the Utah retreat on Friday, Campbell Brown, a former CNN anchor, pressed Mr. Ryan on his decision to support Mr. Trump, according to an attendee, saying she did not know how to explain it to her children.
Then, on Saturday, Dan Scavino Jr., a senior adviser and the social media director for the Trump campaign, criticized Mr. Ryan on Twitter, linking to an article on a conservative website that accused him of harming his party, complete with the headline “Paul Ryan Is the Reason the G.O.P. Is Losing America.”
The discord appeared to bring a quick end to a period of relative peace in the party that began Tuesday when Mr. Trump issued a statement in which he backed away, slightly, from remarks accusing a federal judge of being biased against him because of the judge’s Mexican heritage. Mr. Trump did not apologize but said his remarks had been “misconstrued.”
Later that night, after the final primaries of the presidential race, he gave a restrained speech in which he refrained from offending anyone.
Continue reading the main story
Presidential Election 2016[/paste:font]
Here’s the latest news and analysis of the candidates and issues shaping the presidential race.
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The new approach did not last long. By the end of the week, he hadresumed referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who has called Mr. Trump a “racist bully,” as “Pocahontas” because of her claims during her Senate bid that she had Native American heritage, which has not been proved.
“Somebody said to me, one of the media, ‘Mr. Trump, would you apologize?’” Mr. Trump said at a rally on Saturday in Tampa, Fla. “I said, ‘Yes, I’ll apologize — to Pocahontas, I will apologize!’ Because Pocahontas is insulted.”
Mr. Trump also attacked Mr. Romney, calling him “a choker” and saying he “didn’t work like he should have worked” when he was the nominee in 2012. Once Mr. Romney lost, Mr. Trump added, he should have gone “off into the sunset.”
“You don’t sit there jealous and sick to your stomach,” he said.
A day earlier, Mr. Romney, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, said he feared that Mr. Trump’s election would lead to “trickle-down racism” that would “change the character of the generations of Americans that are following.”
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, gently chided Mr. Romney on Twitter on Friday, writing, “Respect Mitt and differences but couldn’t disagree more.”
Adding that the Supreme Court was “too important to lose for generations,” Mr. Priebus ended his post, “Let’s stop this and unify.”
Mr. Trump and the party have gotten a late start on fund-raising for the general election and need as many of the party’s reliable donors as they can attract. At Mr. Romney’s donor retreat on Saturday, Mr. Priebus was more pointed, telling donors opposed to Mr. Trump that the party would “win with or without you,” according to an attendee present for his remarks.
A representative for Ms. Whitman did not respond Saturday to a request for an interview about her comments. Ms. Whitman, according to one of the people present, did not stop at comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. She also warned the gathering that if Republicans compromised on their principles to win an important election, they would be entering fraught territory.
“What happens next time?” she asked, implying that it could lead to more compromises and more candidates like Mr. Trump.
Ms. Whitman, who ran for governor of California in 2010 and was a finance co-chairwoman for Mr. Romney in 2012, was part of a group of major donors who tried to stop Mr. Trump during the primaries through paid advertising. She has been explicit about her disdain for him.
“Look at the comments he’s made about women, about Muslims, about reporters,” she told CNBC in March. “It’s just repugnant.”
The group at the retreat represented a mix of the Republican Party, divided between those who have said they cannot support Mr. Trump, like Mr. Romney, and those who have tepidly endorsed him, like Mr. Ryan, who was Mr. Romney’s running mate in 2012.
In an emailed statement, Mr. Trump dismissed Ms. Whitman’s comments. “I never met Meg Whitman, but the job she is doing at Hewlett Packard is not a very good one,” Mr. Trump said. “Based on the disastrous campaign she ran in California, and the tens of millions of dollars she wasted, I have learned a lot from her. I do not want her support.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions about its social media director’s gibe at Mr. Ryan, which at a minimum showed a lack of message discipline inside the campaign. Whether it would endanger Mr. Ryan’s support of Mr. Trump was not clear; the speaker’s office did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.
He was forced to respond Friday when pressed by Ms. Brown, who now runs an education website and is married to Dan Senor, who was an adviser to Mr. Ryan and to one of Mr. Trump’s primary race rivals, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
Turning to Mr. Ryan during a panel discussion, Ms. Brown told him that one morning, one of her sons, expressing disappointment, had asked why he endorsed Mr. Trump.
What, she asked Mr. Ryan, was she supposed to tell her child?
The attendee present for the exchange said Mr. Ryan appeared slightly rattled but handled the question well. He said Mr. Ryan had explained that while he understood the disagreement among Republicans, he believed that his decision to support Mr. Trump would be better for the Republican Party in the long term.
Mr. Trump, he said, had won with large margins in some of his House members’ districts, and many voters liked and supported the candidate.
Indeed, Mr. Trump ran away with the Republican nomination with the same flamethrowing approach he is using today.
“It’s like what they said about his temper,” said Brett Mohnkern, 29, of Oil City, Pa., who went to Mr. Trump’s rally on Saturday in Pittsburgh. “Tone down for what?”
Still, the attendee who saw the exchange with Mr. Ryan on Friday said the party’s debate over whether to support Mr. Trump was like a family’s struggle with a divorce.
Mr. Ryan, in one of his appearances at the retreat, tried to infuse what little humor he could into the situation. He joked that he had recently told David Copperfield that he wished the magician could make Mr. Ryan disappear from 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/u...-trump-to-fascists-at-republican-retreat.html