Donald Trump Twitter Rant Fuels Fire With 'Disloyal' GOP

Donald Trump began blasting House Speaker Paul Ryan at 8 a.m. Tuesday, taking to his favorite rebuttal tool, Twitter, to slam the Republican as a "weak and ineffective leader" but also celebrated being set free from the "shackles" that he said the GOP put on him.

The Republican presidential nominee has been on the warpath against Ryan — and the GOP establishment — in the last 24 hours after the Wisconsin Republican held a conference call on Monday in which he said he would no longer defend Trump since the emergence of a tape on Friday in which Trump spoke in lewd terms about sexually assaulting women. Since then, more than two dozen Republicans have either dropped their support of Trump or called on him to drop from the top of the ticket altogether.

Yesterday, Trump shot back on Twitter, saying Ryan "should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee."

Trump continued his campaign against Ryan throughout Monday during campaign appearances and picked back up on Tuesday morning where he left off with a tweet storm that condemned Ryan and the Republican establishment — even saying that Democrats have "proven to be far more loyal" than Republicans.

Trump's frustrations are becoming increasingly visible after a rough few weeks of campaigning in which polls show him slipping further and further behind. Add to that frustration the embarrassment over the tapes and a debate that scientific polls show he lost — all of which point in the direction of an election that is slipping away with less than 30 days to go.

In recent national polling, Hillary Clinton leads head-to-head match-ups against Trump, with the Democrat holding 48.1 percent support compared to 41.6 percent for the New York businessman, according to averages compiled by RealClear Politics.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons