Donald Trump on Wednesday, August 17, shook up his campaign team for a second time in just two months, fending off suggestions that his presidential run is in crisis as polls show Hillary Clinton cruising toward victory.
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A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed Mrs Clinton has a six point lead over Mr Trump.
The campaign announced early Wednesday the addition of Stephen Bannon as CEO, while promoting pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager. Efforts to rein him in have reportedly failed, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been marginalized with the new hires announced on Wednesday.
Mercer has authorized the pro-Cruz super PAC to begin doing work to help Trump.
Manafort drew unwelcome attention to the campaign this week when the New York Times reported that Manafort’s name was on secret ledgers showing cash payments designated to him of more than $12 million from a Ukrainian political party with close ties to Russian Federation.
“He gets the need to personalize and humanize what Trump wants to do”, Appell said. “It’s essentially, ‘dance with the one who brung ya'”.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has shaken up his campaign again, 82 days before the election.
While there has been little reaction to Conway’s appointment just yet, Trump’s critics have pounced on the hiring of Bannon.
The Republican received his first classified intelligence briefing in NY on Wednesday nevertheless.
The reposition also comes at a particularly intriguing time for Trump as he has been trailing Democratic Party candidate Clinton both nationally and in key states. “He’s going to give these policy speeches”.
Details of the new pecking order were hashed out at a lengthy senior staff meeting at Trump Tower on Tuesday while Mr Trump was on the road.
So now expect what has been a controversial candidacy to become even more so.
Several Republicans discussed the personnel changes on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to publicly disclose internal thinking.
Mr Trump appeared visibly frustrated at rallies last week and has repeatedly raised the possibility that he may not win the election.
Conway is well-connected in ideologically right conservative circles, and has ties to the Koch brothers’ influential donor network.
Bannon has circled Trump’s orbit in recent years and has been in touch with aides to the billionaire throughout the campaign. John McCain and Republican House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan could drive an already divided party further apart.
He has also actively promoted false conspiracy theories about Mrs Clinton, and some have then made their way into Mr Trump’s remarks. “And he keeps telling us who he is; it’s time that we believe him”.
Pollster Kellyanne Conway, who has known Trump for years and gained his trust during her brief tenure working for him, will serve as campaign manager.
Kevin Kellems, a longtime Republican strategist, called Conway “the complete package”.
The campaign shake-up, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as polls show Mr Trump trailing Hillary Clinton nationally and in key battleground states following a hard campaign stretch that saw him insulting the Muslim parents of a soldier who died in Iraq and temporarily refraining from endorsing Mr Ryan in his primary race.
Manafort himself has been a distraction to the campaign over questions about the business he conducted in Ukraine.
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Though he captured the GOP nomination after consistently thumbing his nose at party elites, the campaign overhaul indicates that Trump is taking party officials’ frustrations seriously. “I thought it was a masterful choice”, Conway said.
