In spite of a widening rift within his party, the unflappable Donald Trump has assured voters that all is well: "There is great unity in my campaign, perhaps greater than ever before," the Republican presidential nominee tweeted on Wednesday.
The move came amidst reports that some high profile conservatives may be plotting an intervention against him. Although Trump has adopted a brash approach throughout his entire bid for the White House, there is growing concern that he has finally veered completely off course.
In recent days, he has suggested that this November's election will be "rigged" whilst refusing to endorse the re-election bids of conservative House speaker Paul Ryan and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain.
He has also insisted on continuing his row with the Khans: the parents of a Muslim American Gold Star captain who died after sacrificing his life to save fellow soldiers in Iraq.
Although the Khans criticized Trump's anti-Muslim stance at last week's Democratic Convention, the property magnate then mocked the silence of the slain soldier's mother as she stood by her husband during his speech: "Maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say," he retorted.
Overwhelmed by grief, Ghazala Khan later explained that she still finds it difficult to speak before a picture of her murdered son.
Although conservative lawmakers have lambasted Trump's rough handling of the Khans, only a few have actually withdrawn their endorsements.
Appalled, Barack Obama took the unprecedented step of calling on Republicans to denounce their presidential nominee on Tuesday, describing the former Apprentice star as "unfit" for office:
"If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, then why are you still endorsing him? What does this say about your party that this is your standard bearer? This isn't a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily and weekly. There has to be a point at which you say, somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn't have the judgment, the temperament, nor the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world."
Standing by a portrait of former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt at a White House news conference, Obama, who is enjoying strong second term ratings, said that his disdain for Trump went beyond normal partisan politics:
"There have been Republican presidents with whom I disagreed but I didn't have a doubt that they could function as president. I think that Mitt Romney and John McCain were wrong on certain policy issues, but I never thought that they couldn't do the job. But that's not the situation here."
Last week, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg questioned Trump's sanity whilst Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton warned Americans that the tycoon did not have the temperament to be their next Commander-in-chief:
"Donald Trump can't even handle the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign. Imagine, if you dare, imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man that you can bait with a tweet is not a man who can trust with nuclear weapons."
Channeling John F Kennedy, she warned that Trump could lead America into war, saying that such conflicts "were not started by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men, the ones moved by fear and pride."
More worryingly still, according to MSNBC, Trump asked a foreign policy expert 3 times, why the U.S. has nuclear weapons if it's not willing to use them.
The controversies engulfing him may have finally dented his standing in the polls. According to a Fox survey on Wednesday, Clinton is leading her rival by 10 percentage points: 49% vs 39%.
Stuart Stevens, an advisor on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign tweeted: "The Republican Party and @realDonaldTrump is like watching the Lehman Brothers saga unfold again. The stock isn't going up. Sell now."
But, it's still too early tell what kind of impact it will have on this November's election. After all, Trump has made a long string of blunders which range from the size of his penis to mocking a former prisoner of war for getting captured. And, although such faux pas would take down a traditional candidate, he continues to survive fairly unscathed.
In a statementTrump hit back at Obama and Clinton, and accused them of destabilising "the Middle East" and handing "Iraq, Libya and Syria to Isis," though such actions can perhaps be best attributed to the power vacuum created after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.
And, even though the U.S. is one of the bright spots in the global economy, he went on to add: "They have produced the worst recovery since the Great Depression."
But, perhaps one of his most controversial remarks was for the US to mend fences with Vladimir Putin. His ties to the Russian leader have been called into question following his recent call for Moscow to find and release the 30,000 emails Clinton has deleted from her private email server.
The move came after revelations that Russia may have hacked and published thousands of Democratic National Committee emails last week. The messages reveal that officials, who are meant to remain impartial, favored Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders.
If Putin did indeed orchestrate the hack, the question then becomes: what does the Russian leader have to gain from a Trump presidency?
As Obama delivered his searing indictment of Trump, the property mogul held a rally only 30 miles away where he received a replica of the Purple Heart medal from a veteran. After deferring military draft during the Vietnam war 5 times, he then held up the medal on stage proclaiming: "I've always wanted to get the real Purple Heart. This was much easier."
The Republican nominee also mocked a crying baby and its distressed mother at a rally in Ashburn. When the infant first started crying, Trump reassured:
"Don't worry about the baby. I love babies. I hear that baby crying, I like it." But, as the baby continued to cry, Trump quickly changed his mind: "Actually I was only kidding. You can get that baby out of here. That's all right. Don't worry. I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I'm speaking.