The New York Times released a timeline tracking when 110 GOP leaders each announced they wouldn't support Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and the statements he made that provoked the desertions.
The timeline begins on the day Trump announced his candidacy, June 16, 2015. The first Republicans to "walk" were members of the Club for Growth, a conservative organization that launched an ad campaign aimed at discrediting the former reality television star.
The article highlights numerous comments from the billionaire real estate developer and from Republican leaders.
"Trump . . . is employing the kind of hateful rhetoric and exploiting the insecurities of this nation, in much the same way that allowed Hitler and Mussolini to rise to power in the lead-up to World War II," former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman said on Dec. 16, 2015, the earliest quoted denouncement of Trump from a prominent Republican.
The GOP leaders include more than 50 senior national security officials, many of whom served under President George W. Bush, 22 high profile conservatives, and more than two dozen former or current governors and Republicans in Congress.
"He is taking hate groups mainstream," Hillary Clinton said last Thursday, according to the Times, "and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party."
The Daily Beast refers to Stephen Bannon, former chairman of Breitbart News and Trump's campaign chief executive, as one of the leaders of the "alt-right" movement that's holding sway over the Republican establishment.
"We don't really believe there is a functional conservative party in this country, and we certainly don't think the Republican Party is that," Bannon said in 2013, according to a video reported by The Wall Street Journal.
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