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WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- If U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cannot control his mouth, he may lose the presidential race because of his seemingly endless gaffes.
Any gains that Trump would have made from his economic policy speech on Monday have already been erased by his inciting remarks on Tuesday about his rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump implied in a speech at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Tuesday that gun rights advocates have to stop Clinton from becoming president to appoint anti-gun judges.
His remarks set off a firestorm as many interpret them as inciting violence against Clinton or the Supreme Court judges she will appoint after winning the election.
If the brash billionaire keeps this up, he may lose the chance to clinch the White House, experts said.
While Trump's statement could be simply an off-the-cuff remark that was not a complete thought, U.S. media zeroed in on the gaffe, which caused even Trump's supporters to groan and lament the bombastic businessman's inability to control his tongue.
"He certainly has at least shifted many of the headlines towards his economic plan, but a lot of attention continues, and likely will continue, to be paid to his temperament," Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua.
While criticizing the specifics of Trump's economic plan, the Clinton campaign also kept highlighting the issue of Trump himself, as they pointed out that The Economist, a highly regarded British magazine, listed a Trump victory as one of the threats to the global economy, Mahaffee said.
Though Trump was able to keep from his usual over-the-top rhetoric during Monday's speech, which he read from a teleprompter, he has yet to demonstrate that level of self-control on the campaign trail, Mahaffee noted.
"Frankly, many moderates may be increasingly turned off by the fact that we have to continue to discuss whether a presidential candidate has sufficient self-control for the office," he said.
On his campaign trail, Trump has had a number of self-destructive stumbles that cast a long shadow over his White House run as they call into question if he is presidential. As a result, Trump is trailing Clinton in recent polls in several swing states.
This week also saw 50 leading Republican security experts who cautioned that Trump would be a disaster for U.S. national security if elected president, citing that he lacks self-control and acts impetuously.
This resonated with those saying that Trump's personality is unfit for the presidency. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, has already called Trump "unfit for presidency" in an interview early the month.
Analysts said Trump drastically needs to keep focused on the economy, as that is the issue that could win him the election -- if it's not too late to do so, given the constant controversy surrounding him.
While the U.S. economy has improved since the 2007-2008 economic nose dive that sent the global economy reeling, millions of Americans continue to struggle today.
In a televised speech made in Detroit, Michigan, Trump on Monday zeroed in on the U.S. economy in a bid to convince voters that he can bring the lackluster economy back to life. But his economic message was quickly buried by the controversy over his gun control remarks.
