Republican leaders still holding their breath for a cleaned-up, conventional version of Donald Trump to emerge may want to go ahead and exhale.
The presumptive GOP nominee literally wrinkled his nose with distaste at the suggestion that he may soon pivot towards the general election in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday.
“I disagree with a lot of things I’ve watched in politics over the years, that’s why I’m running,” Trump told the Times. “And that may make me less popular with politicians. But I have to be honest. I didn’t get there by doing it the way a lot of these people do it.”
Congressional Republicans rushed this week to condemn Trump’s charge that a federal judge’s “Mexican” heritage rendered him unfit to oversee a fraud case involving Trump University. Trump reportedly responded by ordering his campaign staff to “go at” reporters who asked about the judge or the case itself.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) called the attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel the “textbook definition” of racism and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said he would no longer support Trump in protest.
“I think it’s still time for him to act like a presidential candidate should be acting,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told CNN on Wednesday. “So I haven’t given up hope, but certainly last week was not a good week for Donald Trump.”
Trump took some stabs at reconciliation, sending out a statement saying his remarks were “misconstrued” and giving a relatively toned-down primary victory speech on Tuesday. But he told the Times that Republican leaders, like the party’s voters, will come around to his way of doing things eventually.
“I think I will get along with the politicians actually,” he told the newspaper. “We will get the government moving. I’ve done a lot of work on the other side of politics and I’ve always gotten what I want.”
“We will see how it shakes out but I think it is going to shake out very well. I think people are tired of what is going on,” he added.
