Trump's drive for the White House showed no signs of stopping the hemorrhaging after a brutal week of setbacks, with a new poll showing him vulnerable in November's election in Georgia, a traditional Republican stronghold.
Despite the stumbles, including Trump's refusal to back down in a confrontation with the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in action in Iraq, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort told Fox News it has been "an improving week."
"On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton," he wrote in a New York Times column, adding that Trump "may well pose a threat to our national security."
Morell said that as Russia's president, "Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated."
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Trump has praised Putin as a great leader, and taken policy positions "consistent with Russian, not American, interests" including endorsing Russian espionage against US figures like Clinton and greenlighting a possible Russian invasion of Baltic states, Morell said.
Trump raised eyebrows this week when he made that assertion and gave many details of what he said he saw in the film.
"Remember this: Iran -- I don't think you heard this anywhere but here -- Iran provided all of that footage, the tape of taking that money off the airplane," Trump said Wednesday at a rally in Florida. "Right?"
"The plane I saw on television was the hostage plane in Geneva, Switzerland, not the plane carrying USD 400 million in cash going to Iran!" Trump tweeted.
Trump's campaign has insisted that the money was "a payment for hostages" held in Iran who were released in January.