Trump keeps making incendiary statements. His campaign says that won’t change

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — He’s argued his four criminal indictments and mug shot bolstered his support among Black voters who see him as a victim of discrimination just like them.

He’s compared himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison imprisoned by Vladimir Putin, and suggested that he is a political dissident, too.

And in nearly every public appearance, he repeats falsehoods about the election he lost.

Candidates on the verge of winning their parties’ nominations generally massage their messaging and moderate positions that may energize hardcore primary voters but are less appealing to a broader audience. In political terms, they “pivot.”

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Not Donald Trump. The former president is instead doubling down on often-incendiary rhetoric that offends wide swaths of voters, seeming to be doing little to rein in his most irascible and oftentimes self-defeating instincts. That’s even as some of his most loyal allies have suggested he shift his focus and tone down rhetoric that risks offending independent voters and people