“For weeks, former President Donald Trump’s advisers have urged him to be more disciplined and to stop straying off-message,” the New York Times reports.

“But on Friday, while speaking at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., Mr. Trump insisted that his oratory is not a campaign distraction but rather a rhetorical triumph.”

Said Trump: “You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”

Associated Press: “Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates such as West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.”

“It is not clear who is paying for the effort, but it could be impactful in states that were decided by miniscule margins in the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.”

A new EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan finds 28% of voters said Kamala Harris’ selection of Tim Walz as her running mate made them more likely to vote for her, compared with just 14% who said Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance made them more likely to back Trump.

“The person who should be applauded is the president, who has done the most selfless thing a president has done since George Washington. It’s very hard to let go of power—we know that, we’ve seen it all over the world—and for someone to say ‘I think there’s a better path forward,’ all the credit goes to him.”

— George Clooney, quoted by Variety.

Former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Melania Trump wants Kamala Harris to win the 2024 presidential election, and that she “hates” her husband, the Daily Mail reports.

Said Scaramucci: “I’ve met one person that actually hates Trump more than Melania. That’s General Milley. He’s the only guy I’ve met so far that actually hates him more than Melania.”

“Despite gaining a post-convention edge in polls, Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris-Walz campaign, says in a memo out Sunday — ‘The State of the Race 65 Days Out’ — that her candidate is the underdog,” Axios reports.

From the memo: “Make no mistake: we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs. Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020.”

More: “Vice President Harris will face Trump on the debate stage, where we expect him to be a formidable opponent. In 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states. This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections in a last-ditch attempt to get his name removed the state’s ballot ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

New York Times: “How can it be that a campaign that by all metrics is better off than it was in late June is now pushing a narrative that things are worse than they were when Mr. Biden was in the race?”

“It is because the Harris operation, like any campaign riding a wave of momentum, is suddenly worried about overconfidence.”

“Republicans are setting off a slew of legal fights in the battleground states ahead of the November election, raising suspicions among Kamala Harris and her Democratic allies that the underlying goal is to gin up doubts about the result if Donald Trump loses,” NBC News reports.

“All these claims look different on the surface. But the Harris campaign says there’s a pattern tying them together: Trump and his Republican allies want to sow confusion about the outcome should he lose. Democrats have submitted legal filings in at least one case that convey their misgivings about what they contend is the true purpose of the GOP litigation.”

“A defeated Trump could invoke the cases to revive his unfounded claim that election procedures are tainted in ways that should nullify the result.”

Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who served under the Trump administration, warned Donald Trump against being too “big and strong” in his upcoming debate against Kamala Harris, The Hill reports.

Said Ross: “The only danger is Trump being big and strong and a man. He has to be careful not to be seen as piling on a woman. People don’t like to see a woman pushed too hard.”