Paul Manafort, the chief of US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign, has resigned following the campaign’s major shakeup two days ago, the NY billionaire announced Friday.
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On Friday morning, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort who has served Trump faithfully and crookedly for several months now has been unceremoniously booted from the campaign, tendering his resignation. “Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success”.
Over the last few days, it’s been widely reported that Donald Trump has “shaken up” his campaign by adding new people to it, as reported by Reuters, with the hiring of Breitbart News editorial CEO Steve Bannon as part of that “shake up”.
Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, promised on Thursday he would stick to a more disciplined and uplifting message to voters in the final dash to Election Day without crimping his freewheeling style.
Conway downplayed the notion of internal dissent at campaign headquarters at Trump Tower, telling The Associated Press the staffing changes are “an expansion at a critical time in the homestretch”.
A string of prominent Republicans have announced they will not be voting for Trump as United States newspapers report of a campaign in crisis and staffers unnerved by a candidate apparently incapable of reeling in crass remarks.
The race was tighter at this point in the 2012 election, with Democratic President Barack Obama ahead of Republican nominee Mitt Romney by less than 2 percentage points.
The change comes less than two months after former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was sacked.
Trump has not commented on the allegations in the Times article, however his son, Eric Trump, told Fox News that Manafort, while and “amazing” strategist, had become a “distraction”.
The latest shake-up combines Bannon, a conservative flamethrower, with Conway, a measured, data-driven analyst who might be able to broaden Trump’s appeal to women and independent voters. Weary Republican leaders hope the new leadership team can reverse the NY businessman’s struggles even as some worry it’s too little too late. The insults and red meat rhetoric and off-message digressions that worked so well in the crowded primaries have proven to be a huge turnoff in the much wider, more diverse general election universe.
In one speech, Trump even expressed “regret” for some of the more egregious things he’s said on the campaign trail.
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Breitbart News, in a statement posted after Clinton’s campaign manager made similar accusations in a conference call, dismissed the charges of anti-Semitism and other bigotries as character assassination.
