Gold cards and red hats: A Trumpian approach to fundraising

But like their candidate, they tried to blame Hillary Clinton’s campaign and rejected any notion that Trump’s political identity is founded on five years of peddling the false rumor that Obama was born elsewhere. “We’ll see what it is”, Trump continued.

Some of Trump’s solicitations don’t stand up to scrutiny, including an offer of a book he incorrectly claims is out of print. That operating style did not stop the billionaire developer from vanquishing 16 Republican challengers and capturing the GOP nomination. He also has benefited from a rough patch for Clinton, including her campaign’s secretive handling of her recent pneumonia diagnosis and a steady drip of revelations about her use of a private email system at the State Department. Clinton campaigned in Tampa last week. One survey gave her just a two-point margin, down sharply in a matter of weeks, boosting worries she is ceding the stage to Trump as time runs out on the campaign clock.

After scripted well wishes for her recovery, he returned to questioning her stamina as she prepared to resume campaigning last week.

They didn’t ask you about President Obama, you weasel. “I don’t think so”.

And hours later, Trump appeared to slip off the teleprompter during a speech in Miami when he said Clinton’s Secret Service agents should be stripped of their firearms.

Sanders also conveyed Clinton’s “very significant” plans to lower student debt by refinancing it at substantially lower interest rates and by not requiring citizens to pay back more than 10 percent of their income. On Sunday, Pence called that interpretation “absolute nonsense”, adding on ABC that Trump was only suggesting Clinton has been protected by gun-toting security guards for decades.

“I don’t like critics I like the people that get it done and get it done right”, Trump said. “They should disarm, right?”

Trump holds a lead within the margin of error over Clinton in a CNN poll of likely Florida voters released Wednesday.

If some voters are willing to be persuaded, there’s no certainty Trump can stay on the more measured, policy-focused path his aides have devised. One by one, they argued Trump didn’t start the birther fable, that he’s the victim of a biased media and that people don’t care about the birther issue, anyway. If he wants to be president he needs to calm down with how he’s saying things.

Within minutes, the Clinton campaign condemned the remark.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement that Trump’s remarks about Clinton’s bodyguards fell into Trump’s pattern of inciting people to violence.

With polls showing a tightening race just over seven weeks before the November 8 election, the Republican candidate turned up the vitriol, saying that as president, his Democratic rival would virtually end border enforcement and place the country “in grave peril”.

“I must tell you that just before I got off the plane, a bomb went off in NY and nobody knows exactly what’s going on but, boy we are really in a time – we better get very tough, folks”.

Aides say the tightening polls have validated the new approach in Trump’s eyes.