Donald Trump is sounding a bit subdued (at least for him) after winning the South Carolina primary on Saturday. In this clip from Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asks Trump, “Can you be stopped for the Republican nomination, or is this over?” Trump says he can be stopped, because “I have very good competitors; they’re very smart people.” And he includes Ben Carson (who finished last on Saturday), Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio on that list.
Maybe Trump is already positioning himself somewhat for a general election run, where the conventional wisdom is that you have to be less extreme. So when Wallace asks him if he has to “tone it down,” because he didn’t do well among South Carolina voters who decided within the last week (when he tussled with Pope Francis), Trump basically says, “probably.”
Don’t forget, we started off with 17 people. I’ve been hit from 97 different angles. And now, we’re down to–I guess–five, and we’ll see what happens, but I think I’ll be very presidential at the appropriate time. Right now I’m fighting for my life. I was fighting against a tremendous amount of very talented, very tough people, and I didn’t really have time to think about it. I had to be tough, I had to be smart, and I had to be sharp, and that’s ok too.
It’s unclear if this “appropriate time” won’t be until he’s facing off against the Democratic nominee, which he predicts will be Hillary Clinton, as Yahoo! reports. So wait and see, but a “presidential” Trump might be the most surprising move of all, given the way this race has already gone.