Trump camp acknowledges that he is trailing but has viable path to victory
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s campaign bluntly acknowledged Sunday that the real estate mogul is trailing Hillary Clinton as the presidential race hurtles toward a close, but insisted he still has a viable path to win the White House.
With barely two weeks left and early voting underway in most of the US, Trump’s team said “the race is not over” and pledged to keep campaigning hard — even in states like Virginia and Pennsylvania that polls show are now trending Clinton’s way. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway laid out a path to the requisite 270 electoral votes that goes through make-or-break states Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio.
“We are behind. She has some advantages,” Conway said Sunday. Yet she argued that Clinton’s advantages — like a slew of boldname Democrats campaigning for her — belied her lack of true support. “The current president and first lady, vice president, all are much more popular than she can hope to be.”
Added Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus: “We expect to win.”
Yet even as Clinton appeared to be strengthening her lead, her campaign was careful not to declare premature victory.
“We don’t want to get ahead of our skis here,” said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. He said the “battleground states” where both candidates are campaigning hardest “are called that for a reason.”
As part of his closing message, Trump was laying out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days as president. Yet he undermined his own attempt to strike a highminded tone on policy issues when he announced in the same speech that he planned to sue the numerous women who have accused him of groping and other unwanted sexual behavior.
“All of these liars will be sued once the election is over,” Trump said on Saturday during an event near the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg.
He added: “I look so forward to doing that.”