The Note: Trump Takes on GOP Establishment
— -- NOTABLES
--DONALD TRUMP DOESN’T THINK REPUBLICAN PARTY ‘HAS TO BE UNIFIED’: Donald Trump says he thinks he can win the general election, even if the Republican Party does not unify to support his candidacy, ABC’s NICKI ROSSOLL reports. "Does it have to be unified? I'm very different than everybody else, perhaps, that's ever run for office. I actually don't think so," Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. "I think it would be better if it were unified, I think it would be -- there would be something good about it. But I don't think it actually has to be unified in the traditional sense," Trump said. http://abcn.ws/1T4wEM4
--DONALD TRUMP WALKS BACK TAX PLAN, SAYING ‘IT’S GOING TO BE NEGOTIATED’: As Donald Trump pivots to the general election battle, he's already walking back his tax plan, the most specific policy proposal he has released during the campaign. "By the time it gets negotiated, it's going to be a different plan," Trump said on ABC News' "This Week." In Trump’s tax plan, the wealthiest individuals would get a tax break, with the top tax rate dropping from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. But when pressed if he wants taxes on the wealthy to go up or down, he predicted that the top rate would be higher than the plan says. "On my plan they're going down. But by the time it's negotiated, they'll go up," Trump said. "Look, when I'm negotiating with the Democrats, I'm putting in a plan. I'm putting in my optimum plan. It's going to be negotiated, George. It's not going to stay there. They're not going to say, 'There's your plan, let's approve it.' They're going to say, 'Let's see what we can do.'" ABC’s NICKI ROSSOLL has more. http://abcn.ws/1Yg6TJX
--DONALD TRUMP DOUBLES DOWN ON ATTACKS ON HILLARY CLINTON AS ‘ENABLER’ OF HUSBAND’S AFFAIRS: Looking ahead to the general election, Donald Trump is doubling down on his criticism of Hillary Clinton as an "enabler" of her husband's affairs. "Hillary hurt many women. The women that he [Bill Clinton] abused," he told supporters at a campaign event in Spokane, Washington. "Some of those women were destroyed not by him, but by the way that Hillary Clinton treated them after everything went down," he went on. According to ABC’s INES DE LA CUETARA, the presumptive Republican nominee didn't hold back when it came to Bill Clinton, either. "Hillary Clinton's husband abused women more than any man that we know of in the history of politics," he said. http://abcn.ws/1TwP5Xi
ANALYSIS -- ABC’s RICK KLEIN: RINO hunting is a dangerous business. To review some recent history: Eric Cantor and John Boehner were pushed out of their posts because they were accused of being more interested in power than principle. Now the current House speaker, Paul Ryan, is being threatened with losing his seat because he says he is…putting principle above party? Sarah Palin’s promise to support a Ryan primary challenger, in retaliation for Ryan’s decision to withhold support for Donald Trump, is a stark example of why the Republican Party’s divisions will be exposed all the way through November. You can’t heal a rift that doesn’t want to be brought together. In an interview on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Trump uttered words that – in another context – would have made him the very definition of a RINO (Republican in Name Only). “I have to stay true to my principles also,” Trump said. “This is called the Republican Party. It’s not called the Conservative Party.”
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