In an interview with Fox News Friday, Trump’s son Eric said that Manafort “was wonderful”, but his father didn’t want to be “distracted by whatever things Paul was dealing with”.
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Clinton’s campaign has said Manafort’s associations are a troubling sign of ties between Trump’s campaign team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine.
The new Trump ad focuses on safety and immigration.
Later in the week there was more, including an Associated Press report Thursday, citing internal emails, disclosing that Manafort’s firm waged a covert lobbying effort for Ukraine’s ruling party aimed at influencing American public opinion.
In a statement, the Republican party candidate called Manafort a “true professional” saying he appreciated his great work, but there may have been a clash of personalities as Manafort tried -unsuccessfully – to reign in Trump’s freewheeling campaigning style.
“I think my father didn’t want to be, you know, distracted by whatever things Paul was dealing with”, Eric Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
Gates, for his part, planned to stay.
Manafort’s role in the Trump campaign was marginalized earlier this week with the hiring of Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon, who is now CEO of the campaign, and the promotion of Kellyanne Conway, who is now the campaign manager.
More than 40,000 homes have been damaged by the floods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At a Baptist church later, a woman screamed “Thank you for coming, Mr. Trump” as he and Pence sat down with volunteers.
“We knew you would be here for us!” another shouted. Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who contributed $2 million to a pro-Trump super political action committee in July, is an investor in Cambridge. “They understand the nature of taking on the left”, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally.
The GOP nominee said during the rally that, “sometimes in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing”.
Clinton now leads 47.2 percent to Trump’s 41.2 percent, according to an average of national polls from Real Clear Politics, and is ahead in virtually every swing state.
Only in the past week did Trump place his first round of general election advertising – almost $5 million for TV commercials in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The inaugural accuses Clinton of rigging the election and hammers her on her position on immigration.
On Friday, he also began airing his first television advertisement since becoming the Republican candidate, buying airtime in the crucial states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, where Clinton has already spent of millions in television advertising.
After all, “being Trump” was how he won the nomination in the first place.
Manafort, a Republican campaign veteran who helped manage the 1976 convention floor for Gerald Ford, has come under fire in recent weeks over reports supposedly linking him to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a close ally of Vladimir Putin.
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“Hillary Clinton would rather provide a job to a refugee from overseas, than to give that job to unemployed African-American youth in cities like Detroit, who have become refugees in their own country”, he said.
