Trump goes off the deep end again with gun quip, new attacks on fellow Republicans

For a brief moment yesterday, it looked like Donald Trump had a new resolve to act presidential.

In a major economic address, he swallowed his earlier tax-the-rich rhetoric and instead embraced a more orthodox Republican trickle-down approach.

Some rote TPP bashing aside, he looked like someone you could actually visualise in the White House.

The new leaf has been blown away in under 24 hours.

You might think the Republican nominee would follow up on the themes of his speech, or possibly drill into Hillary Clinton’s latest State Department email woes, which include a dubious overlap with the Clinton Foundation.

Instead, while riffing on how it would be  “a horrible day” if Hillary Clinton were elected and could fill the open Supreme Court position (currently the nine-member court is at a 4-4 conservative/liberal deadlock), he said  “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks."

Then, as the crowd began to boo, he added the vaguely menacing, "Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” (The second amendment being the right to bear arms.)

Some saw it as a joke, others an incitement assassination. Everyone can agree it’s another stupid distraction. He just couldn't help himself playing to the cheap seats.

He also had to deal with more trouble from his own party, has arrived on two new fronts:

Susan Collins, the Republican senator for Maine, penned an editorial for the Washington Post on why she won't vote for Mr Trump. She characterises the candidate as a cruel person who won't admit errors. Unlike the two Republican Congressman who have denounced Trump, Ms Collins is not retiring. If he does win the Whitehouse, the brash New Yorker will have to contend with her (I would say "and other moderates", but Mr Trump is also off-side with the far-right Tea Party wing of his party by dint of his feud with speaker Paul Ryan).

And an open letter from 50 Republican-affiliated security experts says Mr Trump would be "the most reckless president" in US history."

Mr Trump couldn’t help himself and fired back at what he called "failed Washington insiders” ensuring that party infighting would dominate the news cycle (at least, until the stupid second amendment quip surpassed it). 

The problem for the candidate, as the conservative Fox News pointed out (how can a Republican candidate get offside with Fox?) is that many of the 50 are heavyweights who have recently served in office, such as  like ex-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

He earned a scolding from Karl Rove. Many Republicans consider Mr Rove a master strategist. Mr Trump just hates it when anyone tells him he's wrong.

The Republican candidate trails by 7 points in the latest poll-of-polls, and is behind in nearly all of the battleground states.

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