E Minus 28: House Speaker Paul Ryan gave up on Donald Trump, announcing that he’ll no longer campaign on behalf of his party’s candidate for president and will instead spend his time until election day defending the Republican majority in congress. Ryan made his announcement yesterday on a morning conference call of Republican leaders.

Ryan, according to reports, was careful to say that he was not withdrawing his endorsement of Trump, but really, it doesn’t matter. He’s saying Trump can’t win.

The announcement drew angry responses from Republican hardliners and, of course, from Donald Trump, who tweeted, “Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said on Fox News, “These bed-wetting, hand-wringing Republicans — they’re not afraid Donald Trump is going to lose. They’re scared to death he’s gonna win.”

After bringing up former President Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties at Monday’s debate, Trump renewed his attacks yesterday. “For decades Hillary Clinton has been deeply familiar with her husband’s predatory behavior and instead of trying to stop it, she made it possible for him to take advantage of even more women,” Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania. “She is a total hypocrite,” he said. “The hypocrisy of the media and our politicians is hard to believe.”

Trump has begun what may be his final slide in the polls. Clinton leads in all the Battleground states. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, taken before Monday’s debate, has Trump trailing Clinton by 11 points in a four-way race including the two third-party candidates.

Locker Room Talk: Donald Trump excused his vulgar talk about women on an Access Hollywood recording as “locker room talk,” which has stirred up protest from a lot of men who’ve actually spent time in locker rooms. Professional jocks are all over the internet saying they don’t talk like that. Former Minnesota Viking punter Chris Kluwe writes for Vox that, “Oh, sure, we had some dumb guys, and some guys I wouldn’t want to hang out with on any sort of regular basis, but we never had anyone say anything as foul and demeaning as you did on that tape, and, hell, I played a couple years with a guy who later turned out to be a serial rapist. Even he never talked like that.”

Inside Baseball: To borrow an old adage, if you like sausage or politics, you shouldn’t watch either being made. WikiLeaks has posted leaked emails revealing the internal agonizing of the Clinton campaign over positions on the Keystone pipeline, the Glass-Steagall Act, and how to position the career politician Hillary as an agent of change.

In a move straight out of West Wing and Veep, they choose to leak her position opposing President Obama on the pipeline rather than just coming out and saying it. One juicy tidbit: a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton described Chelsea as “a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do.”

All fun aside, someone is hacking computers and leaking information to influence the election.

Hangup: Samsung announced that is it going to stop making its flammable Galaxy Note 7. Last month the South Korean electronics giant recalled 2.5 million new phones and offered to replace them, but the replacements also overheat and spontaneously catch fire. Samsung advises that if you have one of these phones, you should turn it off and leave it off.

Nation: Some rivers are still rising in North Carolina as the state drains out after Hurricane Matthew. Twenty-one people are reported to have been killed by the storm.

Mourning: Several Vermont towns east of Burlington are in shock after the death Saturday night of five teenagers in a flaming car wreck. The teenagers, four of them 16, and one just 15 years old, were struck head on by a car travelling the wrong way in Interstate 89. While a police officer was trying to pull one of the victims from the burning car, the driver of the other car, identified as 36-year-old Steven Bourgoin, stole the officer’s cruiser and drove away. Bourgoin crashed into eight other vehicles before he was ejected from the police car. He’s in the hospital facing a book of charges.

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