Donald Trump, it turns out, is teachable.
Within one tumultuous week — his standing in national and battleground state polls crashing, and his campaign management undergoing an emergency intervention — the presidential candidate who appeared intent on listening only to himself has shown a sudden ability to stop, take stock and reset to urgent advice.
Instead of the rambling, free-style stream of consciousness which has directed most of the campaign rallies where Trump regales his staunchest supporters with random invective about Hillary Clinton and occasional pot-shots at entire classes of people, the Republican nominee for president demonstrated in Charlotte, North Carolina, Thursday night that he gets it: The way he’s been running could cost him the race.
“It is time for a change,’’ Trump said near the end of a nearly hour-long, carefully scripted speech in Charlotte — his first appearance since news broke of his campaign overhaul. This TelePrompTed script wasn’t about trade, or law and order; it was about the basic message that won him his nomination. “What do you have to lose by trying something new? I will fix it. You have nothing to lose.”
“It’s never been about me. It’s about all the people in this country who don’t have a voice,” Trump said — finally, weeks after the party convention that nominated him, underscoring the message of his own acceptance speech that has been lost to weeks of undisciplined campaign trail commentary. “I am running to be your voice… I am fighting for real change, real change.”
“It’s time to vote for a new American future,” he said.
Trump’s attacks on Clinton were not personal; they were political. He readily acknowledged — while short of apologizing — that sometimes he has crossed that line. That crossing has cost him the support of persuadable voters, particularly women, in a contest pitting the lesser-educated against the more-tutored.
“Sometimes… you don’t choose the right words, or you say the wrong thing,” Trump said in Charlotte. “I have done that, and believe it or not, I regret it.”
Trump, clearly following the script of a new campaign manager — Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway — and a new campaign CEO — Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon — underscored his role as the outsider contesting a “rigged” system of entrenched power-brokers while appealing to a vast, disaffected community of Americans who feel they’ve been cut out of the deal.
“Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party have taken the African American community totally for granted,” Trump said in North Carolina, a state where 30 percent of the vote this fall will be cast by minorities — and where the latest RealClearPolitics average of polling shows Trump trailing Clinton by 2 percentage points in a state that President Barack Obama won once and lost once.
“I am the change candidate,” Trump said. “Hillary Clinton is for the failed status quo.”
“I’ve never wanted to learn the language of the insiders, and I’ve never wanted to be politically correct. It takes far too much time,” Trump said.
His attacks on Clinton were direct and focused.
“Hillary Clinton has proved to be the greatest liar of all times… and that is about to change, and it’s about to change very soon — how about Nov. 8?” he said. “I will never lie to you, I will never tell you something I don’t believe, I will never put anyone’s interest ahead of yours… I have no special interest controlling me.”
“While sometimes I can be too honest, Hillary Clinton never tells the truth… and getting worse every day,’’ Trump said, suggesting Americans are “still waiting” for Clinton “to apologize for the many lies she has told them…’’
“Has Hillary Clinton ever apologized for her illegal email server and deleting 33,000 emails?” he asked. “Has Hillary Clinton ever apologized for turning the State Department into a pay-for-play operation?” Has she apologized for Benghazi, “for putting Iran on a path to nuclear weapons?” Has she apologized for ISIS? “She and Obama have unleashed ISIS — whether you like it or not, that’s what happened,” Trump said. “Has Hillary Clinton apologized for the decisions she has made that have led to so much death destruction and terrorism?”
“The establishment media never talks about what matters,” said Trump, channeling here the sentiments of the Breitbart.com publisher who has taken charge of his campaign this week. “They will take a word of mine out of context and go over every syllable and then try to find some hidden meaning in what I say.”
Imagine if the media had spent so much time worrying about illegal immigrants killing people, or investigating the poverty or joblessness of the inner cities, he said. “or if the media focused on what dark secrets must be hidden in the 33,000 emails that Hillary Clinton illegally deleted.”
“Instead, every story is told from the perspective of the insider. It’s the narrative of the people who rigged the system… so many people suffering for so long in silence,” he said.
Trump slammed Clinton for playing to minority voters while accusing her of leaving the United States vulnerable to immigrants who must be screened in “extreme vetting.” “Hillary Clinton is running to be America’s Angela Merkel, and we have seen how that has hurt Germany,” he said.
Trump vows now to be the candidate of education reform.
“We are going to work with everyone in the African American communities, and what a big difference that is going to make,” he said at his Charlotte reset. “We’re going to reject bigotry, and I’ll tell you the bigotry of Hillary Clinton is amazing. She sees minority communities as votes… only votes… If African Americans give me, Donald Trump, their vote, the result will be amazing.”
What’s most amazing is Trump’s ability to push the pause button in a campaign that’s lost its track and replay the basic themes that got him this far. How long he might sustain this discipline, in the face of a struggling campaign, is anyone’s guess.
