THE DUST HAS barely settled following the news that both Ted Cruz and John Kasich have suspended their campaigns to become the Republican nominee for the US presidency.

But Hillary Clinton isn’t resting on her laurels.

With the removal of Cruz and Kasich from the Republican race, Donald Trump is now the de facto GOP nominee for November’s election, whether the party like it or not (and a sizeable amount of its members don’t like it one little bit).

While Hillary is still far from assured that she will be the Democratic option on November’s ballots, she’s wasted no time in concentrating fire on the brash billionaire.

Her campaign has released two videos in quick succession aimed squarely at discrediting Trump. And in one of them she or her own policies aren’t mentioned once. She lets Trump’s enemies within his own adopted party do the talking for her.

The first features a series of soundbites from Trump’s own (now former) challengers for the Republican nomination.

Featuring a rehash of some of the billionaire’s most controversial moments on the campaign trail (including the suggestions that he both mocked a disabled journalist and alleged that female newsreader Megyn Kelly’s moods were influenced by her menstrual cycle), the video contains denunciation after denunciation of Trump by the likes of Cruz, Kasich, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The video is signed off with Bush saying simply: “he needs therapy”.
https://www.facebook.com/hillaryclinton/videos/1137772632945931/

The second video focuses solely on Trump himself, and some of the claims and promises he has made on the campaign trail, including:

• a description of Mexican immigrants as drug-dealers and “rapists”
• his vow to ban the immigration of all Muslims entering the US
• a promise to ban gun control in schools
• a plan to expel all 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the US from the country

https://www.facebook.com/hillaryclinton/videos/1137885926267935/

Hard-hitting stuff. Mind you, such mud-slinging is a game that the Donald has proven himself to be more than fit for in recent times.

But the broadside from Hillary isn’t all that Trump has had to cope with today – his party’s two previous White House incumbents have let it be known that they will be abstaining from November’s vote.

George W Bush and his father George HW Bush have signalled through their offices that they will stay on the sidelines during this cycle.

George W Bush ”does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign”, his personal aide Freddy Ford told the Texas Tribune.

While this lack of endorsement undoubtedly has a lot to do with the barrage of abuse Trump laid at the Bush’s son and brother Jeb before he bowed out of the race for the nomination, the lack of faith shown in the real estate mogul encapsulates the extent to which he has split his own party base.

Trump will be the nominee in November. How many of his fellow Republicans he’ll have onside come election day is more open to question.

With AFP

Read: Donald Trump says he’ll make America win again, ‘win bigly’

Read: With a ‘heavy heart’, Ted Cruz ends his US presidential campaign