NATION/WORLD
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 7A
Ryan, Walden focusing on saving GOP majority
WASHINGTON (AP) — House
Speaker Paul Ryan, the nation’s
top elected Republican, effectively
abandoned Donald Trump Monday,
telling anxious fellow lawmakers
he will not campaign for or defend
the loundering businessman
in the election’s closing weeks.
Pro-Trump members rebelled in
anger, accusing Ryan of conceding
the election to Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, Ryan said he would
devote his energy to ensuring
Clinton doesn’t get a “blank check”
as president with a Democrat-
ic-controlled Congress, according
to people on his private conference
call with GOP House members.
While the Wisconsin Republican
did not formally rescind his own
tepid endorsement of Trump, he
told lawmakers they were free to
do just that and ight for their own
re-election.
Ryan
Walden
Trump ired back on Twitter,
saying Ryan “should spend more
time on balancing the budget, jobs
and illegal immigration and not
waste his time on ighting Repub-
lican nominee.”
Trump retained the backing
of the Republican National
Committee, which has overseen
crucial ield efforts for the
candidate in battleground states.
On a conference call with RNC
members,
chairman
Reince
Priebus said the party remains in
full coordination with Trump.
“Everything is on course,”
Priebus said, according to a partic-
ipant in the call.
Still, Ryan’s announcement
underscored the perilous predica-
ment Republicans ind themselves
in one month from Election Day.
Recent revelations of Trump’s
predatory sexual comments about
women deepened the worries
among GOP oficials who fear
he’ll drag down their own electoral
prospects in November. But others
look at Trump’s loyal bands of
supporters and see no way for
Republicans in other races to win
without their support.
Trump’s running mate Mike
Pence said he was staying with
Trump. “I’m honored to be
standing with him,” Pence said.
Trump’s candidacy long ago laid
bare the turmoil roiling the GOP.
Some party leaders had hoped to
push off a reckoning until after the
election, but with Ryan and other
lawmakers publicly distancing
themselves from Trump — and in
some cases even calling for the real
estate mogul to drop out of the race
— that now appears impossible.
For Ryan, the most pressing
goal through the next four weeks is
preventing Republicans from losing
control of the House, a scenario
that seemed remote as recently as
a week ago. Although Republicans
are not yet panicking given their
wide 246-186 seat majority, Ryan
and Greg Walden, the chairman of
the National Republican Congres-
sional Committee and Oregon’s
only Republican representative in
Congress, both acknowledged on
Monday’s conference call that the
From start, Clinton, Trump out for blood
By NANCY BENAC
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — It
started the minute they
walked on stage and skipped
the pretense of a cordial
handshake.
Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton looked each other in
the eye at the start of their
second debate and set out to
destroy one another.
Given the perfect opening
when moderator Anderson
Cooper bored in on recent
revelations about Trump’s
predatory comments about
women, Clinton struck irst,
and it was clear she was
ready.
“Like everyone else,”
Clinton said, “I’ve spent a
lot of time thinking over the
last 48 hours about what we
heard and saw.”
She would have none
of Trump’s claims that his
comments about women
were nothing more than
locker room banter.
“This is who Donald
Trump is,” she declared.
She added that it was not
just women that Trump had
disparaged, but also immi-
grants, blacks, Latinos, the
disabled, POWs, Muslims
“and so many others.”
Then she said it again
AP Photo/Julio Cortez
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton
exchange ideas during the second presidential debate
at Washington University in St. Louis, Sunday.
with rock-hard resolve: “This
is who Donald Trump is.”
Trump was ready to
pounce with an ugly counter-
offensive.
He went THERE, digging
into the very subject he had
congratulated himself for
avoiding in the irst debate.
“If you look at Bill
Clinton, far worse,” Trump
said.
Yes, Trump allowed, he
was sorry for what he had
said about women.
But his own mistakes,
Trump said, were mere
“words”; Bill Clinton’s
mistakes, he said, were
“action.”
Trump gave a shout-out to
the women he had strategi-
cally placed in the front row
of the audience, including
three who had accused Bill
Clinton of rape or sexual
impropriety.
“You can say any way you
want to say it, but Bill Clinton
was abusive to women,” he
said.
Trump didn’t stop there.
“Hillary Clinton attacked
those same women and
attacked them viciously,” he
added.
A fourth woman in the
audience, Trump said, had
been a 12-year-old rape
victim whose alleged attacker
Clinton had represented,
successfully, as a defense
lawyer.
Not only that, Trump said,
Clinton had laughed at the
girl.
“Don’t tell me about
words,” Trump said.
The facts: Bill Clinton
never faced any criminal
charges in relation to the
alleged sexual improprieties,
and a lawsuit over an alleged
rape was dismissed. He did
settle a lawsuit with one of
the women who claimed
harassment.
Hillary Clinton, for her
part, played a key role in
defending her husband
against allegations of sexual
improprieties, but there is no
clear or independent evidence
that she either enabled his
activities or bullied his
accusers. She did reluctantly
represent the defendant in the
rape case. She did laugh in
discussing procedural details
of the case, but there’s no
evidence she laughed at the
victim.
This was a ight to the
death over character.
The exchange captured
all of the vitriol and disdain
that these two candidates
have harbored against one
another from Day One of the
campaign.
They’ve contained it at
times, let some of it loose on
others.
majority was more in peril in light
of Trump’s problems.
“Of course I condemn Mr. Trump’s
comments on women,” Walden said
in an email statement. “They were
disrespectful and disgusting, and not
representative of the Republican Party
I grew up in and have worked hard to
support and grow.”
“While some aren’t surprised
by his behavior, it’s clear he and
he alone is responsible for his
actions and statements,” Walden
continued, adding he was focused
on his job in Congress and main-
taining a Republican majority
in the House “so we can get the
country on a better path.”
Walden told lawmakers they
still could win their seats, but that
it would require delicate maneu-
vering akin to landing an airplane
in a hurricane in a fog, several
participants said.
BRIEFLY
Shark attacks surfer off Oregon coast
PORTLAND (AP) — Police say a shark has attacked a
surfer north of Cannon Beach off the Oregon coast.
Oregon State Police spokesman Lt. Steve Mitchell
says in a news release that 29-year-old Joseph Tanner of
Portland, Oregon, was apparently bitten while suring
near Indian Beach at Ecola State Park on Monday
afternoon.
Mitchell says Tanner was bitten in his upper thigh and
lower leg.
Tanner was stabilized at the scene and lown to a
Portland hospital with serious injuries.
Nearly a week after hurricane hit Haiti,
U.N. appeals for aid
MARFRANC, Haiti (AP) — At a cramped police
station serving as a makeshift clinic, Darline Derosier
fastened IV drips to jail cell bars, wiped the brows of
cholera patients and tended to the wounds of those
injured when Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti’s
southwestern peninsula.
She was the only health worker helping about 40
patients Monday inside the station bereft of police as
she waited for help to arrive in the hard-hit town of
Marfranc nearly a week after the Category 4 storm
struck Oct. 4.
Among the patients was an elderly woman lying
unconscious on a cell loor with a leg bandaged in an
old rag and a man with gashes around his neck, his eyes
luttering.
“People will die soon if we don’t get some aid,” an
overwhelmed Derosier told The Associated Press.
The town is a 45-minute drive southwest from the
coastal city of Jeremie, where food, medicine and
fresh water are inally arriving but still slow to reach
increasingly desperate communities.
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