After weeks of Donald Trump’s unremitting attacks on the Republican establishment and its “crooked” and “rigged” nomination system, his top campaign aides have sought to assure party bosses that the brash billionaire will indeed be changing his ways and style — and even working with the very party apparatus that he has despised so far.
“You’ll start to see more depth of the person, the real person. You’ll see a real different guy,” Trump’s newly-installed campaign strategist Paul Manafort told the Republican National Committee at a private meeting in Florida on Thursday, a recording of which has been obtained and reported by the Associated Press.
“When he’s out on the stage, when he’s talking about the kinds of things he’s talking about on the stump, he’s projecting an image that’s for that purpose,” Manafort said, adding, “The part that he’s been playing is evolving into the part that now you’ve been expecting, but he wasn’t ready for, because he had first to complete the first phase. The negatives will come down. The image is going to change.”
Stating that Trump by no means is running against the RNC, the top aide has said that the billionaire will help raise funds for the party. As part of the changed approach, Trump is reportedly planning to deliver a foreign policy speech at the National Press Club in Washington next week, using teleprompters and a speechwriter as opposed to his mostly extempore addresses so far. Trump is also planning events to reach out to women who, according to polls, hold a largely unfavourable opinion of him.
But a public demonstration of the new, evolving Trump is still to be seen. As recently as Wednesday — a day after his New York sweep and a day before the RNC meeting in Florida — Trump had railed yet again at a Maryland rally against the party’s “crooked” and “rigged” system, saying it was so designed as to enable the party bosses to pick whomsoever they wanted and keep people like him out.
Trump himself reflected on the image makeover theme at a Pennsylvania rally on Thursday, remarking that he was not really ready yet to act presidential. “I just don’t know if I want to do it yet,” he said, quipping: “At some point, I’m going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored.”
At the same time, in an interview to The Wall Street Journal, Trump hinted at a changed approach since he did not want to blow away his chances.
“The campaign is evolving and transitioning, and so am I. I’ll be more effective and more disciplined,” he was quoted as saying, yet noting that there might not be a substantial change to his personal style and populist message that attract large crowds to his rallies.