A growing number of senior Republican politicians in the United States say they are not ready to support Donald Trump in his bid for the Presidency, even though he is now the party's presumptive candidate in November's election.
Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, became the latest top Republican to distance himself from Mr. Trump.
Two former Republican Presidents and two former Presidential candidates have also said they won't attend the party's convention this summer at which Mr. Trump is to be formally anointed.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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If there were any doubts whatsoever about the problems Donald Trump is going to have unifying the Republican Party around his candidacy, they were dispelled in a dramatic appearance on television by Paul Ryan.
Mr. Ryan is the Speaker of the House of Representatives and under the terms of the Constitution is second-in-line for the Presidency after Vice President Joe Biden.
He took to CNN to announce that he is - as he put it - "not ready" to throw his weight behind the Trump train.
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That is a huge blow for Mr. Trump…..the most powerful Republican in Washington ignoring pleas from the party's chairman to line up behind the party's presumptive Presidential candidate.
And there were other blows.
Two former Republican Presidents…both named George Bush…announced they will sit the Presidential campaign out and won't help Mr. Trump in his quest to win the positions they once held.
Mitt Romney, the last Republican to seek the Presidency, said he'll boycott the Republican convention in Cleveland.
And one of the party's elder statesmen, Senator John McCain, was caught on mic expressing concerns about Mr. Trump's impact on his own re-election hopes.
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The race of his life, he told funders in his home state, because Donald Trump has alienated the Hispanic voters who make up 30 percent of the Arizona electorate.
Trump loyalists continue to insist that the party must rally behind the man who is now poised to represent the party in November.
At Republican headquarters here in Washington, it's reported that staffers have been given until the end of the week to get behind Donald Trump, or go and find another job.
All of which is grist to Hillary Clinton's political mill.
She released a new campaign ad in which she allows Mr. Trump's fellow Republicans to do her dirty work for her.
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We will be hearing a lot more of that in the months between now and November.
But more immediately, having won the nomination battle…it's clear that if he's going to be politically viable, Donald Trump must now wage the ultimate Republican Party war.
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