Trump breaks free: ‘The shackles have been taken off me’

“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to,” tweeted the Republican presidential hopeful.

Trump’s tweets were written just hours after he ignored his teleprompter at a rally Monday night and reveled in calls for his Democratic opponent to be jailed. He took aim at House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who told Republicans he wouldn’t campaign for or defend Trump after a lewd audio tape was released on Friday that caused several GOP lawmakers to defect from supporting their party’s nominee.

“Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty,” Trump wrote.

Trump also accused Ryan, and those who have condemned him in the wake of the audio tape scandal, of sabotaging his success even after he delivered a strong performance in Sunday’s presidential debate.

“Despite winning the second debate in a landslide, it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support,” he tweeted.

More than 16 Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Kelly Ayotte, N.H., John Thune, Texas, and Mike Crapo, Idaho, have withdrawn their support for the GOP nominee since he apologized for the “locker room banter” contained in the leaked audio tapes. Others, like South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard and Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, urged Trump to exit the race and allow his running mate, Mike Pence, to replace him at the top of the ticket.

“Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary,” Trump tweeted, adding that “they come at you from all sides.”

“With the exception of cheating Bernie [Sanders] out of the [nomination] Dems have always proven to be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans!” he charged.

He also lashed out at Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.:

Trump’s Tuesday tweetstorm comes after he spent more than two months practicing restraint at his rallies under the direction of campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and campaign CEO Steve Bannon. The New York billionaire first broke the spell after the first presidential debate last month when he posted a series of tweets around 3 a.m. encouraging voters to “check out [the] sex tape” of former Miss Universe contestant Alicia Machado, who was brought up by Hillary Clinton as an example of a woman Trump had mistreated in the past.

The GOP nominee currently trails Clinton by 6.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics national polling average just 28 days before the Nov. 8 election.