9 times Republicans denounced Trump but came back to him – CNN International

"Mr. President - we must call evil by its name," tweeted Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. "These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism."

But, a look back at the two-plus years since Trump burst onto the political scene suggests a disturbing pattern -- which goes like this:

1. Trump says or does something controversial or just plain wrong.

2. Republican elected leaders condemn him for it.

3. Trump never apologizes or acknowledges any sort of remorse or wrongdoing.

4. Republican elected officials carry on in support of Trump and his agenda.

I plucked out nine of the most high-profile instances in which Republican condemnation of Trump turned to acceptance. These are in no order other than that in which I recalled them.

"Who wrote that? Did Hillary's scriptwriters write it?" Trump said in an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos right after the Democratic convention. Trump also responded directly to the attack from Khan that the Republican nominee had never known true sacrifice: "I think I've made a lot of sacrifices," Trump said. "I work very, very hard."

At a campaign rally in May 2016 in San Diego, Trump took out after Gonzalo Curiel, the judge in a lawsuit against Trump University.

"Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater," Trump said. "He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel."

Trump went on to insinuate that Curiel's Mexican heritage -- though the judge was born in Indiana -- meant that he couldn't offer a fair ruling because of Trump's position on building a wall on the US' southern border.

In February 2016, Trump was asked -- again, by Tapper -- about David Duke, a prominent white supremacist who had endorsed him days earlier.

During the campaign, Trump claimed that he remembered Muslims celebrating on New Jersey rooftops on September 11, 2001. Kovaleski was a reporter for The Washington Post at the time, had investigated those reports and found nothing to them.

Trump, unhappy with the the way the one-time Fox News anchor moderated a Republican primary debate, took after Megyn Kelly. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes," Trump told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday night. "Blood coming out of her wherever."

He later insisted his reference had nothing to do with Kelly's menstrual cycle. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, at the time a Trump primary challenger, said he "would certainly never say anything about a person like that, and I hope [Trump] apologizes because I think that he should."

In his announcement speech in June 2015, Trump said Mexico was sending bad people to the US. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us," Trump said. "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."

Bush said of the comment: "He's doing this to inflame and incite and to draw attention, which seems to be the organizing principle of his campaign."

And yet, through it all, Trump is still in the White House and still, broadly speaking, enjoys the backing of the vast majority of Republican elected officials. Remember that when considering all of the condemnation being issued of Trump's latest major mistake.

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9 times Republicans denounced Trump but came back to him - CNN International

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