Donald Trump seems to be attempting a Simone Biles back flip. He was catapulted through the primaries and the launch of the national campaign by insults to opponents and outrageous, and often contradictory, statements that excited rallies – and won him billions of dollars of free air time. They also raised concerns among Republican leaders, and, naturally, his Democratic opposition, that he lacks the temperament or knowledge for the presidency.

Now he has hired two advisers, Stephen Bannon of the racially charged website Breitbart, as CEO, and pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager. Conway has adroitly tried to restrict him to reading prepared text from a teleprompter and is attempting to qualify his positions, such as banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. This is a good moment to review the judgments of some leading independent commentators.

Trump and Truth

"…At a news conference in Florida, Trump said he has never met Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is,' he said. Last November, he claimed that he "got to know [Putin] very well because we were both on '60 Minutes.'" That made no sense; while the two men were featured the same evening on the CBS newsmagazine show, they were interviewed in different cities and would have had no interaction.

"…But he also lies about big things – claiming, for example, that he opposed the Iraq War and the Libya intervention all along, when the record shows that initially he supported both. No, Trump is clearly a liar."

– Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, August 1, 2016

"PolitiFact recently calculated that only 2 percent of the claims made by Trump are true, 7 percent are mostly true, 15 percent are half true, 15 percent are mostly false, 42 percent are false, and 18 percent are 'pants on fire.' Adding up the last three numbers (from mostly false to flagrantly so) Trump scores 75 percent. The corresponding figures for Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, respectively, are 66, 32, 31, and 29 percent."

– The Atlantic, Dan P. McAdams, June 2016

Trump and Taxes

"Mr. Trump's economic plan is skewed to almost every group other than his core supporters. The more you earn, the bigger the tax windfall under Mr. Trump.

– Financial Times, Edward Luce, June 21, 2016

"Trump has called for the corporate tax rate to be reduced to 15% from 35% and for the top marginal income-tax rate to be reduced to 25% from 39.6%. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has concluded that Trump's proposals could add more than $10 trillion to the deficit in the next decade, even after factoring in projected gains to the economy."

– Barron's, John Kimelman, July 2, 2016

"Mr. Trump's ludicrous tax plan… The plan achieved the unlikely feat of being both hugely expensive and yet startlingly inefficient. Instead of combining tax-cuts with measures to broaden the tax base… The Tax Foundation, a think-tank, found that Mr. Trump's cuts, which cost $12 trillion over a decade before accounting for economic growth, would give only slightly more juice to the economy than Paul Ryan's plan, which comes at one-fifth of the up-front cost."

– The Economist, Democracy in America, August 7, 2016

Trump and the Economy

"We need a president who is a problem-solver, not a bomb-thrower; someone who can bring members of Congress together, to get big things done.

"Throughout his career, Trump has left behind a well-documented record of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits, angry shareholders and contractors who feel cheated, and disillusioned customers who feel ripped off. Trump says he wants to run the nation like he's run his business. God help us.

"I'm a New Yorker, and New Yorkers know a con when we see one! Trump says he'll punish manufacturers that move to Mexico or China, but the clothes he sells are made overseas in low-wage factories. He says he wants to put Americans back to work, but he games the U.S. visa system so he can hire temporary foreign workers at low wages. He says he wants to deport 11 million undocumented people, but he seems to have no problem in hiring them. What'd I miss here?!

"Truth be told, the richest thing about Donald Trump is his hypocrisy. He wants you to believe that we can solve our biggest problems by deporting Mexicans and shutting out Muslims. He wants you to believe that erecting trade barriers will bring back good jobs. He's wrong on both counts.

"We can only solve our biggest problems if we come together and embrace the freedoms that our Founding Fathers established... Donald Trump doesn't understand that. Hillary Clinton does. And we can only create good jobs if we make smarter investments in infrastructure, and do more to support small businesses. Not stiff them. Donald Trump doesn't understand that; Hillary Clinton does.

"I understand the appeal of a businessman president. But Trump's business plan is a disaster in the making. He would make it harder for small businesses to compete, do great damage to our economy, threaten the retirement savings of millions of Americans, lead to greater debt and more unemployment, erode our influence in the world, and make our communities less safe."

– Michael Bloomberg, DNC speech excerpt, July 28, 2016

Character

"The most worrying aspect of a Trump presidency, though, is that a person with his poor self-control and flawed temperament would have to make snap decisions on national security—with the world's most powerful army, navy and air force at his command and nuclear-launch codes at his disposal."

– The Economist, July 16, 2016

"Of all of Donald Trump's vile irruptions – about Sen. John McCain's military record, or reporter Serge Kovaleski's physical handicap, or Judge Gonzalo Curiel's judicial fitness – his casual smear of Ghazala Khan is perhaps the vilest."

– The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, August 1, 2016

"A poll by Gallup suggests that, for the first time ever recorded, the Republican convention repelled more voters than it attracted. Mr. Trump now trails Mrs. Clinton with college-educated whites, a group that has voted Republican since polling began, by a five-point margin.

"…Mr. Trump launched an assault on his disapproving party leadership, by refusing to endorse Senator John McCain, his predecessor in 2008, and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in their forthcoming primary fights.

"…Barack Obama on August 2nd: 'There has to come a point', he said, 'at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn't have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world.'

OPINION The Trouble With Trump ]

"Hours later billionaire Republican donor, Meg Whitman, said she would vote for and donate heavily to Mrs. Clinton and urge her network to do likewise. …She said, it was time 'to put country first before party."

– The Economist, Democracy in America, August 3, 2016

"[Trump] has frequently made outrageous statements that would have finished off a normal political campaign. He has called Mexican immigrants 'rapists', mocked a disabled reporter, predicted a rigged election in November and hinted that the father of Senator Ted Cruz, his main Republican opponent, might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

"…Mr. Trump realised early on – much faster than his political opponents – that a series of outrageous comments would allow him to dominate the headlines and to appeal to millions of angry voters, who are indifferent to the outrage of the American establishment.

"…Given how much is at stake, it is surely now the duty of more leaders of the Republican party to come out and say clearly that they will not vote for Mr Trump. A variety of leading figures, including Mr McCain and Mr Ryan, have made their discomfort and anger with Mr Trump very clear."

– Financial Times, August 5, 2016

Support for Putin's Aggressive Russia

"Trump rekindled a foreign policy debate by saying the U.S. may not come to the aid of alliance members if they are attacked by Russia."

– Wall Street Journal, Paul Sonne, July 21, 2016

"[Trump] made clear that in his view, America's treaty commitments, for decades a cornerstone of its national security policy, are not binding. Instead, they are subject to any sort of conditionality that the president might choose to impose.

"…Trump was referring specifically to a Russian attack on one of the three Baltic states, all of which are NATO members. By asserting that they could well be on their own were Russia to seek to reoccupy them, Trump was doing more than abandoning allies who for five decades, from 1940 to 1990, the United States had considered 'captive nations.'"

– Foreign Policy, Dov Zakheim, July 22, 2016

"Hillary Clinton excoriated Mr. Trump… Mr. Trump's assertion in the televised forum that Mr. Putin's incursions into neighboring countries, crackdown on Russia's independent news media and support for America's enemies were no more troublesome than Mr. Obama's transgressions. She said it showed that, if elected, Mr. Trump would be little more than a tool of Mr. Putin.

"'It suggests he will let Putin do whatever Putin wants to do and then make excuses for him,' Mrs. Clinton told reporters. …To chain Mr. Trump to a Russian leader widely seen as hostile to the United States.

"In the forum, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin that he had been a leader 'far more than our president,' and he praised Mr. Putin's firm grip on Russia.

"And after Mr. Lauer highlighted Mr. Putin's record, Mr. Trump shot back, 'But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?' Such talk is a remarkable break from the traditional boundaries of American political speech.

"For 'Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests,' Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters.

"…Mr. Trump has made improved relations with the Kremlin a centerpiece of his candidacy.

"…While railing against Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries, Mr. Trump has continually praised Mr. Putin's government…

"Most extraordinarily, he used a news conference over the summer to urge the Russians to hack into Mrs. Clinton's emails to find messages the F.B.I. might have missed.

"Democrats and even some Republicans said the fury would have been unceasing on the right had a Democratic presidential candidate held up the leader of a hostile power to deride a Republican president."

– The New York Times, Jonathan Martin and Amy Chozick, September 9, 2016

Breaking Faith

"Clinton herself was intent on keeping Trump's controversial comments alive. Speaking before boarding her campaign plane en route to North Carolina, Clinton said Trump had 'failed once again' to come off as a credible commander in chief and said it was 'scary' to hear him praise Putin.

"'Meanwhile, bizarrely, once again, he praised Russia's strongman, Vladimir Putin, even taking the astonishing step of suggesting that he prefers the Russian president to our American president," Clinton said. "Now that is not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.'

"Clinton also dinged Trump for his discussion of what he has been told during intelligence briefings, which he receives as the GOP nominee. During the forum, Trump said the briefers had intimated that Obama and others did not follow the advice of the experts — an impression Trump said he gathered in part from the "body language" of his briefers.

"…Other lawmakers were concerned about the idea that Trump welcomes praise from Putin. He said in the forum that 'when he calls me brilliant, I think I'll take the compliment, okay?'

"'You know, flattery can be used as a tool that sometimes bears very negative fruit,' said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was once on the shortlist to be Trump's vice-presidential nominee. 'One has to be careful about letting flattery affect one's relationship with a person or a country.'

"…'It's hard to forget what Trump did last night. It was a test, and he failed it,' Clinton said.

"He denigrated active-duty military and praised Putin, she said.

"'People who have sacrificed and spent their lives protecting our country, valuing what makes us exceptional and already great, see Donald Trump and know he should not be anywhere near the White House,' she said."