Donald Trump sat down Saturday with Latino leaders from almost a dozen states in his latest effort to appeal to minority voters who have largely spurned his struggling presidential campaign.
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In a statement issued as he arrived in Louisiana to tour the flood-ravaged state, Trump said Manafort offered his resignation Friday morning.
“Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success”, Trump continued.
Manafort, who only took over as campaign chairman from Corey Lewandowski in June, has in the past week been linked to covert United States lobbying for Ukraine’s pro-Russia government and failed to disclose his foreign links as per USA law.
It was reported on Thursday that Mr Manafort’s firm orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s then-ruling political party. They never disclosed the amount of money received for their efforts nor did they register with the Department of Justice as foreign agents, in apparent violation of federal law that requires USA lobbyists to disclose the amount paid by foreign entities.
Earlier this week, Trump brought in a new campaign chief executive and campaign manager following a disastrous stretch in which the New Yorker committed a series of errors and fell behind Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in both national and battleground state preference polls.
Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News is now serving as chief executive of the campaign and pollster Kellyanne Conway is campaign manager.
“We knew you would be here for us!” another volunteer shouted.
With pressure mounting, the White House said after Trump’s appearance that Obama would visit Louisiana on Tuesday to survey the damage.
In an interview on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”, Mook told host George Stephanopoulos that the Republican presidential nominee and his campaign’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime suggested the real-estate mogul could be appeasing Russian state interests. That decision by Trump seemed to be an embrace of Manafort’s strategy.
Also Friday, Trump started airing his first ads of the general election after moving a day earlier to invest almost $5 million in battleground state advertising.
“America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future”, he said of his Democratic opponent.
Later Friday, Trump fired up a rally in Dimondale, Michigan – but for the fourth time this week spoke with the aid of the telepromoters he used to revile.
“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed”. Obama won roughly 93 percent of black voters in his re-election campaign in 2012.
The tone was a shift from the night earlier, when Trump expressed rare regret for some of his more caustic comments – although he did not say which ones.
“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”.
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“And believe it or not, I regret it”.
