Then, this past weekend, Trump remained uncharacteristically calm as security guards removed a protester from a rally in Sarasota, Fla.

“Be nice to the person,” he said from the podium. “Don’t hurt the person. … Please nicely escort the person out.”

“You see how diplomatic I’ve become?” he remarked later.

The episode was strikingly different from one just a week earlier in Birmingham, Ala., where Trump spotted a Black Lives Matter protester and shouted for guards to “get him the hell out of here.” After the protester, Mercutio Southall Jr., was kicked and punched by others in the crowd, Trump was unapologetic, saying a day later that “maybe he should have been roughed up.”