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When one controversy ends, another begins; the latest in the presidential race

After a stretch of more low-key campaigning, Trump is spending the weekend under fire for comments about Hillary Clinton that seem to invite violence against her, fighting with the media, and engaged in a dispute with a former Republican defense secretary – all on top of a revival of the “birther” issue involving President Obama. The GOP presidential candidate’s proposals, which many have deemed extreme, include everything from ending birthright citizenship to mass deportations to building a giant wall on the country’s southern border.

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Obama said his name may not be on the ballot, but issues of importance to the black community were, including justice, good schools and ending mass incarceration.

Obama said Friday that he hoped the election would focus on more serious issues – and that he was “pretty confident about where I was born”.

Trump was referring to comments Clinton made at a fundraiser in which she said “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables”.

While some backers of Clinton’s primary campaign against Obama eight years ago raised the question of Obama’s birthplace, Clinton herself has long denounced it as a “racist lie”.

And the Republican nominee has been called “beyond repair” when it comes to national security.

“But there’s just been decades of dishonesty flowing out from the Clintons”. “Get people registered to vote”. “I’d like to punch him in the face”, Trump said of one protester at a February rally.

It’s a deeply uncertain proposition given Trump’s staggeringly negative standing with most Americans. “We will educate him”.

Mr Trump ignored questions from reporters about his switch and has yet to explain why he abandoned the “birther” stance that fuelled his political fame and was viewed by critics as an attempt to delegitimise the nation’s first African-American president. “Why shouldn’t voters look at this and, including the birtherism comments on Friday, and say ‘he’s just another politician who will say and do anything to get elected in the moment?'”

Clinton gave a shorter address. And the fact that she wants to simply continued the failed policies of this administration that have run our economy literally into a ditch.

“It’s not about golf course promotions or birth certificates”.

“We need ideas not insults, real plans to help struggling Americans in communities that have been left out and left behind, not prejudice and paranoia”. If the election were held today, Clinton’s chances of victory by 18 electoral votes are at 60 percent, which is still significant but a far cry from last week’s 83 percent. “On Thursday alone, polls were released showing Clinton behind in Ohio, Iowa and Colorado – and with narrow, 3-point leads in MI and Virginia, two states once thought to be relatively safe for her”.

The dinner included warnings about a Trump presidency.

“I hope someone will ask Donald Trump, ‘When you were doing that, did you believe it, and if you believed it, how could you have been so gullible or conspiratorial, or if you didn’t believe it, what were you doing dragging us back to the most painful chapter of American life?”

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“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period”, he added. Mr Mook said then: “A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way”.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump composite         
                                     Reuters