Donald Trump’s USA presidential campaign sealed a major staff reshuffle with the resignation on Friday of its campaign chairman and the Republican nominee tried to end weeks of upheaval to focus on beating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
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Trump, in a statement, praised Manafort’s work on the campaign and called him a “true professional”.
It’s the second high profile departure from the top of Trump’s campaign structure after campaign manager Corey Lewandowski left the operation earlier this summer.
“But this is not the end of the story”.
“The last couple weeks have been very rough at the campaign, and Donald Trump was to perhaps – the speeches focusing on substance, getting into the last 11, 12 weeks, Rita, of a fought campaign – and he has every privilege of surrounding himself with the team that he wants”, she said.
“Trump still has to answer serious questions hovering over his campaign given his propensity to parrot Putin’s talking points, the roster of advisers like Carter Page and Mike Flynn with deep ties to Russia, the recent Russian government hacking and disclosure of Democratic Party records, and reports that Breitbart published articles advocating pro-Kremlin positions on Ukraine”, Mook said.
“I think Donald Trump ought to really investigate this and where his chief adviser, what his association with the Russians are”, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of IL told CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this week. “Despite the latest staff shake-up, Trump’s campaign still maintains strong ties to Russian Federation and pro-Kremlin elements”.
Trump headed to flood-damaged Louisiana to express solidarity with residents cleaning up after devastating flooding that left at least 13 people dead.
“Nobody understands how bad it is”, Trump told reporters, after briefly helping unload a truck of supplies while cameras captured the moment.
While it remains too early to tell, the first moves under the new regime have largely shown an investment in conventional campaigning. That decision by Trump seemed to be an embrace of Manafort’s strategy.
Yet as his poll numbers tumbled, Trump decisively reversed course, installing a media provacateur – Bannon – as his campaign’s CEO. Manafort wound up running the campaign, but took criticism over continuing Republican opposition to Trump and complaints about the candidate’s undisicplined style and repeated attacks on GOP critics.
The Trump campaign said Friday that Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy, would now serve as its liaison to the Republican National Committee.
Mr Manafort’s resignation comes two days after he was effectively demoted in a shake-up of the campaign’s leadership. “What you see is what you get”. Trump had planned to retain Manafort as campaign chairman, but the veteran consultant opted to leave instead.
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“We knew you would be here for us!” another volunteer shouted. “But again, my father just didn’t want to have the distraction looming over the campaign and quite frankly looming over all the issues that Hillary’s facing right now”.
