Paul Manafort was reportedly subject to “the look” from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a few times prior to his resignation from the campaign Friday.
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Rather, she said, this was an effort to “expand the senior team that allows us to meet the needs, “adding: “I think Paul Manafort as chairman and Rick Gates as deputy have done a phenomenal job building our campaign over last five or six months to put it in a competitive place going into the fall”. 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.
“I think my father didn’t want to be, you know, distracted by, you know, whatever things that, you know, Paul was dealing with”, Eric Trump told Fox News, while also praising Manafort’s work for the campaign.
Manafort, who was only brought on board in March, sought to temper Trump’s approach and help him appeal to moderates, an approach that did not appear to be succeeding. The businessman has fallen behind Hillary Clinton in the polls after a series of political missteps and Trump was looking to jolt his campaign. It wasn’t long before Manafort’s influence grew, and by June, he was effectively in charge of the campaign, hoping to position Trump as a competitive general-election candidate.
Mook slammed Trump’s “propensity to parrot Putin’s talking points” and went after two Trump advisers by name, Carter Page and Mike Flynn, for their “deep ties to Russian Federation”.
The shake-up meant a reduced role for Manafort, who had been brought in to try to bring a more professional touch but who had struggled to rein in Trump’s freewheeling ways.
In a statement issued as he arrived in Louisiana to tour the flood-ravaged state, Trump said Manafort offered his resignation Friday morning. The candidate said he is “very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process”. “I wish him the greatest success”.
Manafort has been dogged over the past week by allegations that he received secret payments from a pro-Russian Ukraine political party.
He has vehemently dismissed the claims and denied any wrongdoing. The allegations about the payments were first made in The New York Times on Monday.
John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said it would have been unsustainable for Manafort to stay on after Wednesday’s hires.
Reading from a teleprompter, he told supporters in North Carolina that he had sometimes misspoken. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Both, the person said, had grown uncomfortable with Manafort. Manafort had been brought in initially at Kushner’s urging, the person said. “He did a great job with the delegates, you know, and you know, now you look at KellyAnne (Trump’s new campaign manager) and some of the other people we’re bringing in and they’re absolutely fantastic, and you know, I think they’re gonna be the ones that are going to bring us all the way through November 8”, he said.
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Trump’s son Eric said Friday that while Manafort had been instrumental in steering the campaign through the GOP convention, the former chairman’s business past had begun to detract from his father’s messages.
