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Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort Resigns

Trump also was not pleased with ongoing revelations about Manafort’s past lobbying for the formerly pro-Russian government in Ukraine, said a source familiar with the situation.

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Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort checks the teleprompters before Trump’s speech at the Mayflower Hotel on April 27, 2016, in Washington.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign has previously said the allegations were evidence of “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine”.

Trump said in a statement that he accepted Paul Manafort’s resignation Friday morning, and that he is “very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today”. “I have done that”, Trump said, with a slight smile, during a campaign rally in Charlotte, N.C.

The New York businessman brought Manafort into the campaign in March to organize the Republican nomination, including the prospect of a delegate challenge by “Never Trump” opponents.

This post was syndicated from pulse.ng – Nigeria’s entertainment & lifestyle platform online. At the same time, party leaders have conceded they may divert resources away from the presidential contest in favor of vulnerable Senate and House candidates if things don’t improve.

Donald Trump’s staff changes have done little to convince Republican consultants and critics that he’s moving toward building a winning organization for November.

Yet as his poll numbers tumbled, Trump decisively reversed course, installing a media provacateur – Bannon – as his campaign’s CEO.

A series of controversies, including a protracted row with the Muslim American parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, saw Trump tank disastrously in the polls.

Manafort had come under fire in recent weeks for his past political activity in Ukraine, which included consulting for Ukraine’s former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych.

The New York billionaire, whose multiple self-inflicted wounds have left him trailing in virtually every battleground state, spent the day in North Carolina, meeting law enforcement officials and addressing supporters later Thursday. It tries to contrast an America with Hillary Clinton in charge with that of Donald Trump.

Trump, whose campaign is built on his persona as a victor, said several times Wednesday that the campaign was “doing well”, and said his speech hours earlier in Wisconsin Tuesday was well-received.

Trump blamed Clinton and President Barack Obama for the rise of ISIS and said that the Democratic Party has ignored the African-American community and taken its votes for granted. “And believe it or not, I regret it – and I do regret it – particularly where it may have caused personal pain”.

When asked if he has evidence that Manafort actually received the money that had been earmarked for him, Leshchenko said investigators could prove that only if they question the people named in the ledgers.

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Steve Bannon – who runs the conservative website Breitbart News, which routinely bashes the GOP establishment and employs nationalist and anti-immigration rhetoric – is now chief executive officer of the campaign.

Donald Trump expresses his regrets during a campaign speech in Charlotte N.C. Thursday