Trump seizes on Clinton's absence to press his case to voters

Donald Trump hurled himself into a new effort to reshape the presidential race Monday, scrambling to allay voters' concerns about his temperament and put Hillary Clinton on the defensive over her critical comments about many of Trump's supporters.

Though Trump, the Republican nominee, has largely withheld comment about Clinton's health, showing uncharacteristic restraint after her campaign announced she had pneumonia, he took Clinton's unexpected absence from public view as an opportunity to press his case with ferocity.

Among Trump's advisers, there is a sense of urgency. With eight weeks left in the race — and just two before his first debate with Clinton, the Democratic nominee — Trump may never again have such a window to make his argument to voters more or less uninterrupted.

Without a forceful message and iron discipline heading into the debates, Trump could struggle mightily to overcome the deeply rooted opposition to his candidacy. An ABC News-Washington Post poll published over the weekend showed Clinton with a 5-percentage-point edge over Trump nationally, with 6 in 10 voters describing Trump as unqualified and biased against women and minorities.

Trump seized the chance Monday to turn the charge of intolerance against Clinton: Denouncing the allegation that his supporters were bigoted, Trump argued in a speech in Baltimore that Clinton had shown "contempt" for voters by deriding many of his supporters as racist and sexist, calling them a "basket of deplorables" at a fundraiser Friday. At a rally Monday night in North Carolina, Trump said Clinton was running a "hate-filled and negative campaign."

[Trump says he'll release "very specific" details of his health]

The Trump campaign also announced the support of R. James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, to reassure voters of Trump's readiness for the presidency.

Trump made no mention of Clinton's health in his campaign speeches. During two television interviews Monday morning, he said he wished Clinton well. He also did not revive his frequent accusation that Clinton lacks the physical strength to be president, though he suggested vaguely that "something is going on."

Instead, he used a speech to the National Guard Association of the United States to defend his supporters at length, arguing that they were right to be concerned about border security and crime, and that those concerns did not indicate a hateful view of racial and religious minorities.

"If Hillary Clinton will not retract her comments in full, I don't see how she can credibly campaign any further," Trump said, demanding an apology. He claimed that his campaign was doing "amazingly well with African-American and Hispanic workers."

But Trump, who records little support in the polls among racial minorities and educated whites, did not address any of the past remarks that have contributed to his low standing with those groups. He has continued to call for a crackdown on immigrants who are in the country illegally, and has declined to retract his false assertions in the past that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Trump has also not expressed regret for clashing with the family of a slain Muslim Army captain or renounced his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country.

Clinton has rebuked Trump over the last month for what she has called his promotion of racially insensitive messages and policies and his alignment with leaders of the movement known as the "alt-right," which is widely seen as holding fringe and racist views.

Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster, said that Trump appeared to be recovering his footing in the race, but that it might be too late for him to change many voters' long-standing assessment of his character and capabilities.

"Hillary Clinton clearly won the summer, and there's little doubt Donald Trump dug himself a very deep hole in the aftermath of the nominating conventions," Blizzard said. "While Trump is starting to climb out of that hole now, his ability to take advantage of a few bad weeks for Clinton is going to be limited due to enduring views about his judgment, his temperament and his rhetoric toward other ethnicities and women."

And Democrats are skeptical that Trump will be able to reinvent himself by using Clinton's biting comments as a shield. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who advises a pro-Clinton super PAC, described an exercise he uses in focus groups, asking voters to write down three words to describe Trump before the discussion begins.

"People use the word 'racist' consistently to describe him," Garin said. "But they also talk about him as a dangerous egomaniac."

Still, on a conference call with top supporters Monday, advisers to Trump spoke of Clinton's turbulent stretch as a source of relief: For the first time in a while, they said, they were starting the week on offense, according to people who participated in the call who spoke on condition of anonymity about a private discussion. Campaign surrogates were told to hammer Clinton for her description of Trump voters, and to say as little as possible about her pneumonia diagnosis.

Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army officer who advises Trump, said there was optimism in the campaign that the momentum of the race had "totally shifted in Mr. Trump's favor." He predicted that voters would see a distinction between "a guy who made all kinds of comments as he was fighting to win the primaries" and the Donald Trump of the general election.

Trump has taken other steps in recent days to steady his candidacy, moving to shore up his campaign in crucial swing states. With Clinton holding a daunting advantage on the Electoral College map, Trump aimed a new television campaign at the four most critical states for his candidacy: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

He has given his aides greater leeway in directing his television advertising, allowing the campaign to focus on that smaller cluster of states, a change from as recently as two weeks ago, when Trump was personally choosing where to run television ads, according to two people briefed on the Trump operation.

Trump also removed the head of his Florida operation last week, replacing her with Susie Wiles, a veteran Republican operative close to Gov. Rick Scott. And Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, who is still a trusted adviser, has visited New Hampshire in recent weeks, meeting with senior Republicans there and making suggestions on spending and strategy decisions in the state, two people familiar with his activities said.

It remains to be seen if Trump and his allies can maintain this level of determined focus. Numerous times, Trump has briefly adopted a more disciplined pose on the campaign trail, only to give in quickly to the temptation to taunt and brawl.

Even Monday morning, as he refrained from taunting Clinton in a television interview, Trump made an offhand reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as "Pocahontas." Warren, a Democrat, has described herself as having Native American heritage.

Some of Trump's advisers have suggested in the past that Clinton's health should be fair game. Blaise Ingoglia, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said he considered Clinton's handling of her health a legitimate campaign issue because she did not immediately disclose that she had pneumonia.

"The disturbing part of that whole thing is that the campaign is willing to conceal that instead of being up front and honest," he said. "You really start to question: What else is being concealed?"