Donald Trump's aides 'should be on suicide watch', says former Ted Cruz spokesman

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Members of Donald Trump’s inner circle should be placed on “24-hour suicide watch”, a former spokesman for Republican Senator Ted Cruz has said.

Rick Tyler, who served as spokesman and communications director for Mr Cruz’s failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, said Mr Trump’s plummeting poll rating should be a major cause for concern for his team.

Speaking to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, he said: "If I were a political consultant looking at the candidate with this kind of numbers, I'd have them on 24-hour suicide watch.

“These numbers are not good. They don’t look recoverable."

It comes after a new CNN poll showed Mr Trump’s support amongst Republican voters has fallen by 14 per cent in the last six months.

Only 59 per cent of GOP supporters strongly approve of the job he is doing – down from 73 per cent in February. However, 83 per cent still express some level of approval.

Among all American voters, only 38 per cent approve of Mr Trump’s performance compared to 56 per cent that disapprove.

Close to two in three (59 per cent) consider his first 200 days in office to have been a failure.

No previous US President has had such a low approval rating at this stage of their term in office.

The poll also revealed that people do not trust Mr Trump and his team to give honest information. Less than a quarter (24 per cent) of Americans say they trust all or most of what they are told by the White House, while 30 per cent say they trust “nothing at all” that comes from Mr Trump’s team.

Mr Tyler was forced to resign from the Cruz campaign in February 2016 after falsely accusing rival candidate Marco Rubio of making disparaging comments about the Bible.

Mr Trump has had an unusually high turnover of advisers during his first six months in the White House. His chief of staff, press secretary, assistant press security and national security adviser have all resigned, along with two separate communications directors.

His replacement communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, lasted just 11 days in the job before being sacked by Mr Trump’s new chief of staff, General John Kelly.