Panic

Philip Rucker and Dan Balz report at The Washington Post:

The Republican Party was in turmoil again Wednesday as party leaders, strategists and donors voiced increasing alarm about the flailing state of Donald Trump’s candidacy and fears that the presidential nominee was damaging the party with an extraordinary week of self-inflicted mistakes, gratuitous attacks and missed opportunities

....

Trump has failed to take advantage of Friday’s report showing slow economic growth in the last quarter or on an interview Clinton gave to Fox’s Chris Wallace on Sunday in which she said that FBI Director James B. Comey had generally agreed with her characterizations of the use of a private email server as secretary of state. The interview has drawn criticism from news organization fact checkers.

“Donald Trump can still win this thing, but not on the current trajectory that he’s on, and that’s really up to him,” said [MS RNC member Henry] Barbour. “At some point, he needs to be immeasurably better than Hillary Clinton, but he’s not going to have an opportunity to govern if he doesn’t begin to bring Republicans together and then, eventually, bring independents and even Democrats on board and convince them that he can do this job.”

Barbour said he, like others, has been frustrated at missed opportunities since the Democratic convention ended Thursday night. “The last several days have made this election a referendum on Donald Trump. We want this to be a referendum on Hillary Clinton and the wrong direction the country’s on.”

Chuck Todd and Carrie Dann enumerate at NBC:

• In a Washington Post interview, Trump declined to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan against his primary challenger
• He reiterated that he hasn't endorsed Sen. John McCain and said the onetime prisoner of war "has not done a good job for the vets"
• He slapped out at Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, saying "she has given me zero support"
• He suggested that Americans should pull their 401(k) funds out of the stock market
• He said he's "always wanted" to receive a Purple Heart but that having one gifted to him by a supporter was "much easier"
• He said that the handling of sexual harassment has "got to be up to the individual"
• He accused Khizr Khan of being "bothered" by his plan to keep terrorists out of the country, and said that he had no regrets about his clash with the family
• He appeared to feud with a crying baby during a rally
• He reiterated that "if the election is rigged, I would not be surprised"
• [The list goes on ...]