The Trump/Putin love fest is going to continue to be an issue in the presidential campaign, especially because Donald Trump refuses to admit that he has business interests in Russian Federation and Ukraine. Manafort has been beating back reports from multiple media outlets in recent days over his ethics, which have been egged on by a Clinton campaign eager to highlight Trump’s ties to the Kremlin.
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But the resignation and the events that led to it have cast a shadow on an already faltering Trump campaign. Trump had planned to retain Manafort as campaign chairman, but the veteran consultant opted to leave instead. The newspaper noted that Obama interrupted his two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard earlier this week to attend a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on the MA island.
Manafort’s and Gates’ lobbying activities carry outsized importance as they played a formative role building out Trump’s campaign operation after pushing out early rival, Corey Lewandowski.
“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 has suggested he would have a good relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and suggested – sarcastically, he says – that Russian hackers find Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Yet the trip did little to obscure the turmoil in Trump’s campaign, punctuated early Friday when Trump announced that he’d accepted campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s offer to resign.
She is leading Mr Trump 47.3 per cent to 41.2 per cent, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average.
The owner of the steel company was a long-time supporter of Viktor Yanukovych, who was once the prime minister of the country.
“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.
Paul Manafort reportedly did a lot of work there that benefited American companies, such as Chevron and Exxon, and also American agriculture. Buzzfeed reported McSherry’s connection to the lobbying effort Thursday.
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John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said it would have been unsustainable for Manafort to stay on after Wednesday’s hires. The sources for that New York Times report were investigators in the anti-corruption bureau in the Ukraine. Manafort has vehemently denied the allegations. He has also allegedly tried to lobby American press to give positive press to Ukraine politics. On Thursday, the AP reported that it had obtained emails revealing further details: Gates directed an unregistered influence campaign that included attempts to gain positive press coverage for Ukrainian officials, sway USA legislators, gather political intelligence and undercut American public sympathy for the imprisoned rival of Ukraine’s then-president. Neither of these outlets took him up on his offer. Also today, Paul Manafort officially resigned from his post as campaign chair for the Trump campaign. The Aug. 14-18 online poll showed that Clinton was supported by 42 percent of Americans who are expected to vote, compared with 34 percent for Trump. And it is clear that Hillary Clinton is not going to stop asking those questions until she gets more clarity for America on Trump’s finances.
