Trump playing a ‘part,’ top aide says

Republican front-runner Donald Trump has been playing a “part” during the White House primary but is starting to pivot toward a presidential “persona” for the general election, according to his chief strategist.

“He gets it,” Trump’ convention manager Paul Manafort told members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) at the party’s spring meeting in Hollywood, Fla., on Thursday, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post.

{mosads}“The part that he’s been playing is now evolving into the part that you’ve been expecting. The negatives will come down, the image is going to change, but ‘Crooked Hillary’ is still going to be ‘Crooked Hillary,'” Manafort added, referring to Trump’s moniker for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s aides descended on the RNC meeting to sell their campaign’s path to victory to GOP insiders, with Manafort exuding confidence in predicting that Trump would avoid a contested Republican National Convention this July.

Rival Ted Cruz immediately seized on the remarks during an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin, accusing Trump of openly “lying” during the GOP presidential primary.

“Donald is a New York liberal who is pretending to be a conservative, to try to fool Republican primary voters,” Cruz said during the interview, also mentioning Trump’s off-the-record comments to The New York Times on immigration.

“All of us are frustrated with politicians lying to us. I’m actually going to give Trump a little bit of credit here — he’s being candid, he’s telling us he’s lying to us,” Cruz said.