“Corey Lewandowski on Friday said that Paul Manafort’s resignation illustrates that the Republican nominee will do anything he can to get his campaign on track and win”.
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“You can get rid of Manafort, but that doesn’t end the odd bromance Trump has with Putin”, campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement. Trump praised Manafort and called him a “true professional” and thanked him for his “great work”.
The week was filled with bumps in the road for Manafort.
In recent days, Manafort has been the subject of several reports about the work he did for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, in which he is accused of receiving more than $12 million in off-the-books cash payments – something he vehemently denies.
The Republican presidential candidate named Stephen Bannon, head of Breitbart News, as the campaign’s chief executive, and longtime conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway was assigned the role of campaign manager.
Those revelations included an Associated Press report from Thursday, which revealed Manafort’s firm orchestrated a covert US lobbying operation on the party’s behalf.
Manafort joined the campaign in March and had clashed with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was sacked three months later. That is why on Friday, I helped to make public more documents related to Manafort’s dealings with the Party of Regions, which he used to consult for. That decision by Trump seemed to be an embrace of Manafort’s strategy.
Correction: This story was revised to correct that Manafort’s title had been Trump campaign chairman.
That’s a stunning change in tone for a candidate who has built not only his presidential campaign but also his adult life on an unapologetic brashness.
The states are must-wins for Trump, who trails in polling averages in all four. “For example, Manafort came to Ukraine several times previous year”.
The departure also comes as Manafort is defending himself from investigations into his extensive lobbying history overseas, particularly in the Ukraine, where he represented pro-Russian interests. The allegations about the payments were first made in The New York Times on Monday.
Despite facing backlash from his own party’s leaders after engaging in a fierce war of words with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan who was killed in Iraq, Trump had expressly stated, “I don’t regret anything”. Trump’s “negatives are going to come down”, he said at the time, “the image is going to change, but Clinton is still going to be crooked Hillary”.
Trump’s air-time purchase is expected to grow with the inclusion of cable advertising, but so far breaks down to $1.3 million in Florida, $775,000 in North Carolina, $675,000 in OH and $790,000 in Pennsylvania. “I have done that”, the GOP nominee said, reading from prepared text.
In recent days, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had been searching for someone to join the campaign whom both he and Trump could agree was trustworthy, according to a person close to the campaign.
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Trump, in his first speech following the shakeup said Thursday in Charlotte, North Carolina that he regrets causing “personal pain” because of things he has said “in the heat of debate” during the campaign, a rare admission of remorse.
