"I don’t wanna pivot. I mean, you have to be you," Donald Trump said Tuesday. | Getty Trump: ‘I don’t wanna change’

Even as he sags in the polls both nationally and in nearly a dozen battleground states, Donald Trump must remain Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee said Tuesday.

Trump acknowledged that he should probably adjust his tactics to shore up his diminishing standing in the polls against Hillary Clinton but argued that doing so would betray the millions of supporters who have backed his campaign.


“Well, possibly I do, but, you know, I am who I am. It’s me,” Trump told Wisconsin news station WKBT-TV in a sit-down interview Tuesday. “I don’t wanna change. Everybody talks about, ‘Oh well, you’re gonna pivot, you’re gonna’ — I don’t wanna pivot. I mean, you have to be you. If you start pivoting, you’re not being honest with people.”

The clock and calendar appear to be working against him. The election is less than three months away, but early voting kicks off in less than six weeks in Minnesota and South Dakota, and, while 2016 has proven to be an atypical election, polling experts say no candidate in Trump’s position at this point following the nominating conventions has gone on to win the popular vote in November in modern times.

But Trump pointed to history as evidence that he can still win.

“I’ve gotten here in a landslide and we’ll see what happens. I mean, in the end — don’t forget: When I lost Wisconsin, it was over for Trump,” he said, referring to the state he lost to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by double figures in April, a month before he ultimately vanquished his opponents and became the presumptive nominee.

“Except for one problem,” Trump continued with a chuckle. “I then went on a very good run.”

In a separate interview with Fox News reporter John Roberts, Trump disputed the notion that his campaign is doing poorly, specifically in Wisconsin, invoking a familiar metric as a measure of his success.

“I actually think I'm doing good. I have the biggest crowds,” Trump said. “You're there, you see them. Nobody's ever had crowds like this, they say. Somebody actually reported it the other day.”

And he boasted of his temperament — his “single greatest strength,” by his account — while knocking Clinton’s disposition in an interview with the La Crosse Tribune.

“I actually think that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a good temperament. I thinks she’s very unstable in certain ways,” Trump told the newspaper. “I don’t think she has what it takes to make our country into and turn our country into a winner again.”

As for being the GOP standard-bearer, “I think temperament is one of my greatest assets,” Trump added. “I’ve won all my life. I’ve been winning. I always thought that temperament — I mean I have always felt — and been told — that my single greatest strength is temperament.”

Louis Nelson contributed to this report.