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Though Trump is seeking to pivot to the general election in order to become more acceptable to a broader group of voters, his latest ad, sowing fear and misinformation, is revealing. It is not only an attack on immigrants and refugees. It is an attack on the economic security of us all.

I really should get out of the habit of watching "Morning Joe." I'm an early riser and for a long time it seemed the perfect segue between my second cup of coffee (during "Way Too Early") and sitting down to work. Joe's bombastic ego and Mika's giggly, faux feminism got me just riled up enough to throw the comforter and dogs off my lap and head to the computer.

For those of us watching the Trump circus on the outside, it is unsettling, to say the least, watching millions of people led by their fears, and leaders like Gingrich who stoke them despite facts to the contrary.

Whether it's the now inevitable national unilateral rejection of you that you are already preparing for by saying things like the election is rigged and that the Sarah Palin media is turning on you or the unlimited Blue Velvet gas that you are huffing that is making you delusional enough to think that you have been both a fine parent and outstanding human being, let me say this:

So, when this banner ad from the Trump campaign popped up on my computer this morning, I knew there was something oddly familiar about the pose.

"You [Iranian officials] will be in the future etched in the annals of history as criminals. The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, ...

The week began with a speech Donald Trump read off a TelePrompTer. And in a stunning development -- are you sitting down? -- he then did not stomp all over his message by saying monumentally stupid things for the rest of the week. No, really!

Obviously Trump doesn't give a damn about the black vote. But he does care very much about the non-racist white working and middle class vote.

Trey Ellis

Novelist, Screenwriter, and Associate Professor at Columbia University

In a state which may vote blue this November, Ayotte goes to great lengths to sound independent, almost like a Democrat. But is she?

Don C. Reed

Sponsor, Californias Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of 1999

He called President Barack Obama an "Uncle Tom." Yes, he did. Green Party vice-presidential nominee Ajamu Baraka ...

Ian Reifowitz

Author of 'Obamas America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity'

Most of those who call her out dismiss her as a bigot, but after analyzing a number of her videos, I honestly don't think she is. She is, however, extremely angry about issues that she isn't very well-versed on.

There is a growing asymmetry between the media's mounting demands for Donald Trump to release his tax returns (Hillary has done so) and their diminishing demands that Hillary Clinton release the secret transcripts of her $5000 per minute speeches before closed-door banking conferences and other business conventions.

As Trump stokes the fear of fear itself, I am reminded of Nietzsche's saying that "whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."

In Trump's warped world, it might be enough to vaguely say that you have regrets. But Trump owes the people he has attacked and bullied so much more than that.

Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm

Former Governor of Michigan; Senior Adviser, Correct The Record; Senior Research Fellow, UC Berkeley's Energy and Climate Institute

Having offended constituencies vital to securing electoral success in November, including blacks, Latinos and women, Donald Trump has now seemingly su...

Nikolas Kozloff

Author, 'Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left'

I recently wrote about the misappropriation of the term "passionate about" and how it makes my head spin. Today I'm losing my marbles over the use of "authentic."

Pam Ferderbar

Satirist, humorist. Author of Feng Shui and Charlotte Nightingale.

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Donald Trump: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News

Donald Trump delivers a campaign speech in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday. Gerald Herbert / AP

In a moment apparent self-reflection Trump said "sometimes I can be too honest" which,

He did not, however, ever use the words "apologize" or "sorry."

The comments come as Trump's campaign has jolted in from controversy to controversy, dropping in the polls, alienating voters, and prompting Republicans to distance themselves from the GOP nominee after such landmark moments as racist comments about a Mexican judge and a feud with a Gold Star family. After all, Trump began his campaign by referring to Mexicans as "rapists and murderers" and calling John McCain's "hero" status into question, despite the Arizona senator and former Republican nominee's time spent as a prisoner of war.

Since then, his comments have ranged from the allegedly "sarcastic" calling President Obama the "founder of ISIS" to the downright concerning calling on "Second Amendment people" to take action (of the electoral or otherwise) against Hillary Clinton should she win in November and have the chance to appoint justices to the Supreme Court.

Thursday evening marked Trump's first public event since shaking up his campaign staff for the second time this election cycle another event with Trump flanked by prompters that he previously mocked opponents for using.

Now, Trump is coming as close to the "pivot" so many expected for so long.

The question though, as it's always been, is if he will fully turn the corner and embrace his new, reigned in, pre-written campaign persona.

Not all of his usual candor and flair was gone, however. Nor was the electricity and spontaneity of the crowd, who still found occasion to chant "lock her up" and scream about building the wall.

Still, his message was tempered and presented with a new coat of rhetorical paint.

Trump also pitched for the second time this week directly to African-American voters.

"If African-American voters give Donald Trump a chance by giving me their vote, the result for them will be amazing," he claimed. "... It is time for change. What do you have to lose by trying something new? I will fix it."

Trump has not campaigned at all in any black communities this election cycle and his support with African-American voters ranges from zero percent in some battleground states to a whopping 1 percent in an NBC/WSJ national poll from earlier this month.

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Donald Trump Admits Regret, Wrongdoing During 'Heat of Debate ...

Usually, you have to wait until a person becomes president to see if they can fulfill the promise of their presidency. But Donald Trump is offering us a sneak preview. He has promised unrivaled success as president, even though he has no political experience. His campaign tests this proposition. Trump had no experience as a campaigner either, yet he beat 16 rivals soundly, causing some of them to embarrass themselves, perhaps irrevocably. The general election, though, has posed a stiffer challenge. His recent campaign shakeup-- the second top-level shift since becoming the likely GOP nominee-- is either a sign of adaptation by an entrepreneurial new thinking executive who has come back from bankruptcies in his career, or its an act of desperation and self-soothing that comes before defeat.

Campaign changes at the top dont necessarily tell us anything about a candidates chances on their own. John Kerry switched campaign managers and lost. Ronald Reagan did the same and won. Well know which is the case with Trump soon enough. In the interim, however, the campaign change does offer evidence about the promise Trump has made to voters. The real estate tycoon has pledged an extraordinary level of effectiveness as president. He will transform the military, shrink the federal budget, achieve record economic growth, revamp the tax code, bring back manufacturing jobs, quickly dispatch ISIS, force the Chinese to heel, keep American businesses from moving operations overseas and be a first-class cheerleader for the United States. He has said there will be so much winning that we will grow tired of winning.

This is hyperbole, of course, but still, the essential promise of the Trump campaign is that he is a world beater once he sets his successful mind to a task. That he lacks experience is not a problem. Its an asset.

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Investigators in Ukraine are looking into a ledger that apparently shows millions of dollars of payouts to Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul ...

By the Donald Trump standard of success, he is arguably farther behind in the general election than his polls indicate. Hes down nationally by an average of six points and hes down in the key swing states. By all accounts, his organization is well behind where it needs to be with early voting starting in a little over a month. Its not that Donald Trump cant come back. Its that he has promised unrivaled success in all that he touches. By that measure he is not winning.

Yes, say his supporters, but think of all the things blocking him: the awful press, the fact hes never done this before, staffers who dont sync with him, and turncoat establishment Republicans.

Lets assume all of these things are hampering Trump and are not excuses for a flawed campaign. Even so, they are the normal obstacles to campaigning. None of them are a surprise. They could not be a surprise to a candidate making the claims to success Trump has made. That he is inexperienced at this pursuit is not an excuse available to him. His lack of experience is supposed to be an assetthe key to even greater success than the insiders.

The hurdles Trump is facing now roughly approximate the hurdles hell face as president. Except that the presidency will be harder. The job will be just as unfamiliar as his current pursuit, just as random and far more constraining. Campaigning is the easy part. As a candidate Donald Trump can run his campaign like a business. As president hell be hemmed in by the office, the separation of powers, custom and the overwhelming tonnage of duties that come with the job. Every president leaves office lamenting that the job was more confining than they imagined.

Trumps new campaign team has been picked to help him break out of the minimal constraints hes embraced as a general election candidate. I am what I am, Trump has taken to saying. It was a change that he foreshadowed in his interview with Time last week. I am listening to so-called experts to ease up the rhetoric, and so far, Im liking the way I ran in the primaries better, he said.

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Donald Trump announced a major campaign shake-up in which he hired a new CEO and promoted a senior manager. Roll Call columnist Jon Allen joins C...

For several months, the Trump team has suggested that there would be a modification to the candidate who ran in the primaries. Paul Manafort made that his first promise to nervous donors. Dr. Ben Carson said there were two Donald Trumps, and voters would just have to be exposed to the one he had seen behind-the-scenes. In early July, Sen. Bob Corker said without a pivot the campaign would die in three weeks. Sen. Marco Rubio said on Face the Nation that the pivot would wipe away his fears that Trump shouldnt be trusted with the nuclear codes. Mike Pence has been telling Republicans like Senator Jeff Flake that they should support Trump because in private he is a different man.

Donald Trump has banished all this talk. There is one Donald Trump, the guy who won the primaries. Please get out of his way now and let him win the general election. (Or, if hes going to lose, hes going to do it having been true to himself).

Donald Trump is going to be more Donald Trump than ever. It does not seem like the challenges he has faced in the last three weeks have come from a lack of assertion of his personality, but the choice he has made mirrors a decision every president must make every day. Every president faces a balance between his instincts and the bracing frankness of outside advice-- if hes lucky enough to have people around him who give him that advice. Because the presidency encourages sycophancy and group-think, those who have served presidents warn that every chief magistrate needs a person who can tell them no and who can help them fight against their instincts when their instincts are going to vault them into the abyss. But presidents also need to know themselves well enough to trust their instincts, because in the final moment they are alone with world-changing decisions.

Campaign shakeups are either a sign of desperation or adaptation. If Donald Trump can right his campaign, hell not only have helped his poll position, but hell have proved a central claim of his campaign: that his skills honed in the business world can be transferred to complicated unfamiliar tasks. If hes made the wrong choice, he will undermine his campaign and the case for it -- which means hes unlikely to get a chance to test the theory of his campaign in practice in the Oval Office.

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What will Donald Trumps campaign shakeup tell us?