– A week after two appearances in North Carolina, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump returned to the state Thursday and publicly expressed regret for some of his past mistakes.
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“You don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong things”, he told supporters at a rally at the Charlotte Convention Center. “Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with personal issues”.
It was a rare admission for a man who has said that he prefers “not to regret anything” and it underscores the dire situation he finds himself in.
By hiring Bannon and promoting pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager, while Manafort retains his campaign chairman title, Trump may be formalizing the negative tack the Clinton team has been anticipating.
Donald Trump’s campaign has bought its first round of television advertising of the general election, including a six-figure TV ad buy in Ohio. Earlier this month, he said he did not regret his attacks on the parents of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq.
One Clinton campaign official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that throughout staff discussions Wednesday, the consensus was that Trump’s moves shouldn’t change anything in terms of Clinton’s lines of defense.
“They will take words of mine out of context and spend a week obsessing over every single syllable”, he said.
And the changes appear to be more than cosmetic.
But the Democratic nominee doesn’t plan to adjust her strategy or shift staffing in response, according to interviews Wednesday with campaign advisers, surrogates and party strategists. But the vagueness about what exactly is meant by “people like you”, which is left up to each voter to define, may help it reflect the diffuse sense of disenfranchisement that seemingly underlies much of Trump’s campaign.
Weary Republican leaders are accepting Donald Trump’s latest staff shake-up, hopeful that a new leadership team can reverse the NY businessman’s struggles even as some worry it’s too little too late.
In his remarks, Trump struck a new, inclusive tone and tried to appeal directly to non-white voters, who have so far resisted his candidacy.
Gov. Scott Walker says he still thinks Donald Trump can win the presidency if he gets voters to focus on him instead of a flurry of what Walker calls “sideshow” issues.
“What do you have to lose by trying something new?” he asked.
“Young people are destroyed before they even start”, he said. “He has continued to do so through each of the 428 days from then until now, without shame or regret”, said spokeswoman Christina Reynolds in a statement.
Trump needs to be “comfortable about being in his own skin” while she and new campaign CEO Stephen Bannon “sharpen the message”, Conway said.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s reboot comes too late, and whether he has the discipline to maintain it.
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The Republican National Committee has already conceded it may divert resources away from the presidential contest favor of vulnerable Senate and House candidates if Trump’s standing does not improve in the coming weeks.
