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Top Trump Adviser Jeff Sessions Says Campaign 'Is Not Over'

The public agrees with Trump on trade and national security, Sessions said.

ByABC News
August 14, 2016, 10:53 AM

— -- Top Trump foreign policy adviser Sen. Jeff Sessions says Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign is "not over," and criticized media coverage claiming his campaign is in trouble.

“You’ve had this whole morning talking about nothing but negative on the Trump campaign,” Sessions said on ABC's "This Week." “This is the kind of thing that does build on itself, and has, I think, made mountains out of molehills."

A New York Times story published Saturday claims the Republican nominee’s advisers are struggling to get him to adjust his tone and rhetoric and that he is "beyond coaching."

Trump denied the story this morning in a tweet: “The failing @nytimes, which never spoke to me, keeps saying that I am saying to advisers that I will change. False, I am who I am-never said."

Sessions noted he had not read the New York Times story, but said he believes Trump still has a "good chance of winning" the election in November. "And that's because the issues are what the American people believe in, and he's right and they are right."

"I think Donald Trump, when he's talking about trade, national security, protecting us from immigration and violence and terrorism, those kind of things he's correct on," the Republican senator from Alabama said.

Sessions also said Trump has been "wrestling" with how to communicate in the general election.

"He had a lot of fun in the primaries. He was really charging away. And he enjoyed that. But it is a different thing to run a presidential election," he said. "He does need to communicate -- and I think he can -- more effectively."

A NBC/WSJ/Marist poll released Friday shows Donald Trump trailing his rival Hillary Clinton by double digits in key battleground states of Virginia and Colorado. Sessions said Trump's slide in the polls could be a result of "negative press coverage" and Clinton's convention bounce.

Sessions also responded to Donald Trump's statement this week that the only way he could lose the swing state of Pennsylvania to Hillary Clinton "is if cheating goes on." Sessions said there is "cheating in every election," and that too much has been read into the Republican nominee's comment.

"What he was saying is, it's going to be a very close election. He believes he's going to win Pennsylvania," Sessions said.

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