“Donald Trump and his allies signaled Thursday that he is ready to move past the controversies that have dominated the 10 days since the first presidential debate and that he will try to stay focused on policy, not attacks, at the second debate on Sunday,” the Washington Post reports.

“The Republican presidential nominee appeared more controlled on the campaign trail on Wednesday and Thursday than he was last week, sticking with scripted speeches, mostly avoiding interviews and sending tweets that appeared to have been closely edited, if not entirely composed, by his staff.”

Matt Bai: “The problem with Trump’s tax history is that it’s emblematic of something larger, a missing plank at the foundation of his campaign. I suspect he knows this too, which is why he so doggedly refused to release his returns, technically defensible as they are.”

“Simply put, there doesn’t seem to be any record anywhere of Trump having considered the public interest above his own. This isn’t me ripping into the guy for being rich or bombastic; it’s a genuine assessment of his record as a citizen and a celebrity. If there’s some evidence of Trump having served anyone but himself, ever, for more than one night at some red carpet benefit, I’d like to see it.”

“This is new in presidential politics. Going back to George Washington, American presidents have more or less fulfilled the ideal of citizen soldiers.”

Donald Trump told KSNV-TV  that his derogatory statements towards women were just for “entertainment” and did not reflect his true feelings.

Said Trump: “A lot of that was done for the purpose of entertainment, there’s nobody that has more respect for women than I do.”

Harry Enten: “Donald Trump’s strategy in this campaign has been fairly clear from the beginning: Drive up Republican support among white voters in order to compensate for the GOP’s shrinking share among the growing nonwhite portion of the electorate. And Trump has succeeded in overperforming among a certain slice of white voters, those without a college degree.”

“But overall, the strategy isn’t working. Trump has a smaller lead among white voters than Mitt Romney did in 2012, and Trump’s margin seems to be falling from where it was when the general election began.”

You can see the impact of this change in the improved Swing-o-Matic.

CNN has found “two more Playboy videos in which Trump makes an appearance, including one in which he is depicted photographing fully clothed models with a Polaroid camera and conducting an interview with a potential Playmate.”

“The scenes featuring Trump do not contain nudity or sexually explicit content, but other scenes in the movie depict fully nude women seductively rubbing themselves in different scenarios.”

Donald Trump “used his private foundation, funded by outside donors, to launch and fuel his political ambitions. Such contributions, if they were made solely for Trump’s benefit, could violate federal self-dealing laws for private foundations,” RealClearPolitics reports.

“From 2011 through 2014, Trump harnessed his eponymous foundation to send at least $286,000 to influential conservative or policy groups… In many cases, this flow of money corresponded to prime speaking slots or endorsements that aided Trump as he sought to recast himself as a plausible Republican candidate for president.”

The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) has issued a “notice of violation” to Donald Trump’s foundation, ordering it to immediately stop soliciting donations in New York, the New York Times reports.

Politico: “Newly confident in Hillary Clinton’s November prospects, Democrats are now plotting a post-Election Day campaign against individual Republicans for nominating—and sticking by—Donald Trump.”

“Party operatives in key states, with help from a few Washington players, are starting to fluff the feathers on the Trump albatross they want to hang around the GOP’s neck in 2017, 2018, even 2020. Anyone who stood with Trump, these Democrats intend to say, enabled racism, irresponsibility and a departure from conservative principles.”

Donald Trump suggested to a room full of veterans that soldiers who return from war suffering from PTSD are not “strong” and “can’t handle it,” BuzzFeed reports.

Said Trump: “When people come back from war and combat and they see maybe what the people in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it.”

“There was a silence in the room after his statement, and people on social media were quick to express anger toward his comments.”

“We were in the boardroom one time figuring out who to blame for the task, and he just stopped in the middle and pointed to someone and said, ‘You’d fuck her, wouldn’t you? I’d fuck her. C’mon, wouldn’t you?’ Everyone is trying to make him stop talking, and the woman is shrinking in her seat.”

— A former crew member for “The Apprentice,” quoted by the AP, on Donald Trump’s behavior toward a cast member.

“Donald Trump’s campaign announced Saturday evening that the candidate would soon deliver a nine-sentence critique of comments Hillary Clinton made months ago about many of the millennials supporting her primary rival, Bernie Sanders. It was an attempt to latch onto a new headline in hopes of finally escaping the controversies that had consumed his week,” the New York Times reports.

“It didn’t work.”

“It took Trump nearly 25 minutes to read the brief statement because he kept going off on one angry tangent after another — ignoring his teleprompters and accusing Clinton of not being ‘loyal’ to her husband, imitating her buckling at a memorial service last month, suggesting that she is ‘crazy’ and saying she should be in prison. He urged his mostly white crowd of supporters to go to polling places in “certain areas” on Election Day to “watch” the voters there. He also repeatedly complained about having a “bum mic” at the first presidential debate and wondered if he should have done another season of ‘The Apprentice.'”