"incredibly offensive"

Donald Trump’s bad week just got worse and it’s only Tuesday

Donald Trump
Donald Trump at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, July 24, 2021 (Photo: Gage Skidmore/The Star News Network, via CC BY-SA 2.0)

A major donor to the Republican Party has said that he will not back Donald Trump if he takes another run for the Presidency in 2024.

Ken Griffin is a super-wealthy hedge fund manager. During the last election cycle, he donated around $46million to GOP politicians, making him the fourth-biggest donor to the Republicans last year, reports Bloomberg.

That’s a serious amount of money.

In a public discussion with Erik Schatzker at the Economic Club of Chicago yesterday, Griffin said he’s never personally donated to Trump in the past … and that won’t change if Trump decides to run again in 2024.

“I think it’s time for America to move on,” said Griffin, before going on to call Trump, “so pointlessly divisive.”

Griffin also said he was “appalled” by some aspects of Trump’s behavior, including his willingness to “attack people based on where they came from or the color of their skin.” Heralding from South Florida, Griffin said he found Trump’s attacks on the Hispanic community “incredibly offensive,” adding: “We need to put that chapter of American history behind us.”

He did offer Trump some praise, calling his economic policies “pretty damn good.” Clearly, not so good that he’d want to see Trump return to the White House.

Although Trump might brush off criticism from someone who has not donated to him in the past. Griffin’s standing as a top GOP donor means his words carry weight. Also, if he’s no intention of donating to Trump, any donations he makes instead may go toward helping a GOP rival for the Presidency.

Related: Rosie O’Donnell says there’s one person in particular who can be blamed for Donald Trump

Griffin’s comments come a day after former White House aide, and Apprentice contestant, Omarosa Manigault Newman also poured cold water on the idea of Donald Trump running again in 2024. Manigault Newman questioned whether Trump’s health was strong enough.

“I don’t know if he will even be healthy enough to run in 2024, and I think he needs to come clean to the American people about where he is on that before getting into a very stressful and strenuous race for the White House,” she said in an appearance on MSNBC.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that advisers to Trump have advised the former President to hold off announcing whether he intends to run again in 2024 until at least after the midterm elections.

They think if he announces now, and Republicans fail to secure the Senate or House in 2022, Trump could be blamed.

“The biggest point we drove home was that he doesn’t want to own the midterms if we don’t win back the House or Senate,” said one source, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity.

Related: Donald Trump’s very, very bad autumn just got much worse

On top of the criticism from Griffin and Manigault Newman, today (October 5) also see the publication of a tell-all memoir by former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. Entitled I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw in the Trump White House.

Extracts of the book have already been serialized in several news outlets, and they paint a picture of a toxic and chaotic environment within the Trump administration.

Grisham says during Trump’s time at the White House, it was “a hot mess 24/7”, and resembled “a clown car on fire running at full speed into a warehouse full of fireworks.”

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