Donald Trump tries a softer tone before family values group

Donald Trump has registered his disdain for an effort to let felons in Virginia cast ballots in the November election.

“This whole thing with the prisoners, this whole thing with the prisoners is not sounding too good,” he said. “Where murderers can vote and all these people can vote? I don’t think so.”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was speaking at a rally Friday night in Richmond, Va.

In April, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, used his executive powers to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who have served their sentences -- many of them African Americans, a core voting bloc of Democrats.

Virginia, an important swing state in the general election, has some of the strictest laws when it comes to voting rights for felons. The nonpartisan Sentencing Project estimates that 1 in 5 African Americans in Virginia is not allowed to vote because of a criminal history.

“We will ensure everyone with freedom to live in our communities has the right to participate in the democratic process,” McAuliffe, whose state is one of several swing states in the general election, said on Twitter at the time of his announcement.

The effort has faced legal hurdles in recent weeks as Republicans in the state filed a lawsuit to block it. The Virginia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case next month.

Trump made it clear where he stands on the issue.

“Hopefully the court will act quickly -- 200,000 people ... it’s not supposed to be the way it works,” he said.

As Donald Trump prepares for what he says will be a major speech next week attacking Hillary and Bill Clinton, a videotaped deposition from a class-action lawsuit against him in San Diego could put him in an awkward spot.

The testimony shows Trump trying to explain past statements such as “I know Hillary, and I think she would make a great president or vice president” and “Bill Clinton was a great president.”

The depositions were taken last December and January as part of the Trump University case in federal court in San Diego, in which ex-students allege they paid thousands of dollars for increasingly expensive seminars offering real estate investment advice that wasn’t worth it.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs dragged up statements Trump had made years earlier — such as the 2008 blog posts about the Clintons — trying to undermine his credibility. Under oath, Trump tried to explain how his views have changed.

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It wasn’t quite a kinder, gentler Donald Trump. But the presumptive GOP presidential nominee was certainly more restrained.

“No one should be judged by their race or their color,” Trump said in an address Friday to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. “We have a divided nation. We’re going to bring our nation together.”

The bland remarks, standard fare for any politicians, amount to something of a comedown for Trump after a period of high turmoil in his campaign.

His repeated complaints about a federal judge overseeing the Trump University case, who he insisted could not be impartial because of his Mexican heritage, have drawn anger and scorn from many GOP leaders, including accusations of racism.

Trump has mocked other candidates for using a teleprompter. He read from one on Friday, with occasional unscripted asides, in a relatively muted performance.

He also softened his rhetoric, talking more about helping minorities and the poor, and less about divisive issues such as building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border,, which long has been the centerpiece of his speeches.

Trump still got in plenty of attacks on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

He warned that her policy proposals on education, trade, taxes and the economy would ruin the country, and argued that the millions of dollars she and her husband have raised would give special-interest donors undue influence if she is elected.

“These donors will own Hillary Clinton,” Trump said.

Trump has promised a major speech outlining his attacks against Clinton as soon as Monday.

He also sought to separate himself from Clinton on social issues, probably the top concern of his evangelical audience.

Ralph Reed, the group’s founder, noted that Clinton was giving a campaign speech nearby at Planned Parenthood just as Trump was to take the stage.

Trump called the appointment of Supreme Court justices “one of the most important reasons why we have to win” in November.

His campaign recently released a list of judges he said he would consider nominating to fill an empty seat on the court and other vacancies should they occur.

“And by the way, these judges are all pro-life,” he said Friday.

Trump told the socially conservative audience that he is “with you 100%.”

In her first speech since locking down the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton predicted the election will be “profoundly different” than any before, and not because of the history she made as the first woman to lead a major-party ticket.

Blasting Donald Trump for intemperate comments about women, minorities, Muslims and even the disabled, the former secretary of State argued Friday that the Republican nominee “does not see all Americans as Americans.”

“So this election isn’t about the same old fights between Democrats and Republicans,” she said at a luncheon hosted by Planned Parenthood. “It’s about who we are as Americans.”

Clinton opened by taking stock of the eventful week, thanking President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren for their endorsements Thursday. She met with Warren just hours earlier at her home in Washington.

“It has been a big week,” she told a ballroom illuminated in pink. “And there’s nowhere I’d rather end it.”

She also thanked Planned Parenthood, the women’s healthcare organization that is a major political target of Republicans, saying it performs critical services for women across the country.

As first lady, Clinton said, she worked closely with Republicans on initiatives to help prevent teen pregnancy. But “things feel quite different now,” she added.

“If right-wing politicians actually cared as much about protecting women’s health as they say they do, they’d join me in calling for more funding for Planned Parenthood,” she said.

As president, Clinton said, she would “always have your back.” But she warned Trump held a vastly different view of the organization and women in general. She singled out his response to a question earlier in the primary campaign that he’d be open to considering legal punishment for women who have abortions.

He did back off the assertion, Clinton conceded. “He’s doing that a lot lately,” she joked.

“But anyone who would so casually agree with the idea of punishing women like it was nothing to him, the most obvious thing in the world, that someone doesn’t hold women in high regard. Because if he did, he would trust women to make the right decisions for ourselves.”

Trump vows he’ll be “the best for women,” Clinton noted, mockingly using Trump’s own words.

“Do we want to put our health, our lives, our futures in Donald Trump’s hands?” she said. “Every woman and everyone who cares about women will answer [that question] when they vote in November.”

If Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) served as vice president and had to take over as commander in chief, she says she could do the job.

“Do you know you would be capable of stepping into that job and doing that job if you were ever called to do it?” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked.

Warren responded: “Yes, I do.”

Warren’s supporters floated rumors that she might appear on Hillary Clinton’s shortlist for a running mate after Clinton secured enough delegates Monday to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Warren announced her endorsement of Clinton during Maddow’s MSNBC show Thursday, shortly after President Obama had endorsed Clinton and vowed to campaign for her.

Warren has recently issued a string of tweets mocking and denouncing Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, as unqualified to sit in the Oval Office.

In an interview with Politico, Clinton said she holds Warren in the highest regard.

“I think she is an incredible public servant, eminently qualified for any role,” Clinton said. “I look forward to working with her on behalf of not only the campaign and her very effective critique of Trump, but also on the issues that she and I both care about.”

A strong Republican presidential candidate would offer inclusive and inspirational ideas — which don’t appear in Donald Trump’s campaign, according to House Speaker Paul Ryan, the nation’s top elected Republican.

In a taped interview with ABC News, Ryan again criticized Trump for his comments claiming that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is biased in the Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage.

Ryan, who has endorsed Trump, said he won’t hesitate to continue scolding the presumptive GOP nominee publicly and privately.

“Suggesting that a person can’t do their job because of their race or ethnicity, ... that’s not a politically incorrect thing to do, that’s just a wrong thing to say,” Ryan told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

Ryan said the Republican Party wants to offer voters a platform to “fix our country’s problems,” but Trump’s inflammatory comments have gotten in the way.

Stephanopoulos asked Ryan if Trump’s campaign is offering the “inclusive” message the speaker touts.

“It’s not,” Ryan said. “I hope that it gets there.”

(AFP-Getty Images / Associated Press)

Before the June 7 primaries, Hillary Clinton reminded Bernie Sanders that she ended her 2008 presidential campaign on that exact date. It happened four days after Barack Obama was deemed the presumptive nominee, and more than 500 days after her campaign began.

Three days after the Associated Press reported that Clinton had enough delegates to be the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee, and two days after losing the California primary, Sanders has not ended his campaign. He’s campaigning in Washington, D.C., and hasn’t said much about his plans going forward beyond working to defeat Donald Trump this fall.

Here’s how the final days of Clinton’s 2008 campaign stack up against Sanders’ current run.

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