Donald Trump explained Tuesday evening that comments he made earlier about being freed from shackles were in reference to his public spats with top-ranking GOP lawmakers.
“The shackles are some of the establishment people that are weak and ineffective people within the Republican Party,” the GOP nominee said in an interview on Fox News. “Senators and others and [House Speaker] Paul Ryan, led to a certain extent by Paul Ryan.”
Trump’s interviewer asked, “They were holding you back? They were holding you back?”
“It’s not a question of holding back, no. But they don’t give support, they don’t give the kind of support. You know we got more votes, more than 14 million votes,” Trump said.
Ryan told Republicans Monday morning that he would neither defend nor campaign with Trump ahead of the Nov. 8 election. The speaker also told lawmakers to “do what’s best for you in your district.”
The Speaker’s attempt to put some distance between himself and Trump comes after the Washington Post published a report last week revealing the GOP nominee once bragged about leveraging his celebrity status in return for sexual favors from women.
In response to Ryan’s reported comments, Trump shot back on social media, “Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration, and not waste his time on fighting the Republican nominee.”
The Republican candidate tweeted later Tuesday morning, “It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.”
It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
Trump explained in his interview on Fox that the so-called shackles that had been holding him back are GOP lawmakers.
“We’ve been having a problem. We have millions and millions of followers. We set records in the primaries,” Trump said.
“We have a group of people that want to see America be great again, and [House Speaker] Paul Ryan, you know, open borders and amnesty and lots of other – and bad budgets by the way, very, very bad budgets,” he continued. “Frankly, the only one that [President] Obama negotiates well with is Paul Ryan for the budgets. That’s the only negotiation he can win.”
