Donald Trump says Monday it was “inappropriate” for Newt Gingrich to demand he drop the subject of an American judge’s ethnicity and start acting like “a potential leader of the United States.” But Trump did not comment on the other Republican leaders’ unanimous call for him to lay off the jurist, a sign that the GOP presidential candidate doesn’t want to blow up the fragile truce he has struck with them.
Trump insists that he’s only defending himself against relentless questions about lawsuits against Trump University. US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Trump says, cannot be impartial in the lawsuits against Trump University because his parents were born in Mexico and Trump wants to build a wall along the border.
“You have to respond,” Trump says on Fox News. “All I’m trying to do is figure out why I’m being treated so unfairly by a judge.”
Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Rimrock Auto Arena, in Billings, Montana, May 26, 2016 (AP/Brennan Linsley)
A day earlier, Gingrich said Trump’s focus on Curiel’s ethnic background was “inexcusable” and Trump’s “worst mistake.” He was one of several Republicans who publicly demanded that the presumptive GOP candidate move on and unite the party. Across the Sunday talk shows, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he “couldn’t disagree more” with Trump’s statements about Curiel’s impartiality, adding that “we’re all behind him now” — an implicit warning that such unity might not be the case for long.
— AP
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