Donald Trump shook up his faltering campaign again on Wednesday, adding a data-driven pollster as campaign manager, and as CEO, a pit bull conservative news executive.
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Mr Trump has shaken up his struggling presidential campaign with moves bringing in two new managers and demoting another on Wednesday. Paul Manafort remains campaign chairman, but analysts say he has effectively been demoted.
Insiders hope that Conway’s polling data will guide Trump’s rally appearances, such as a law-and-order speech he gave Tuesday night that included an appeal to black voters, and that he will focus on the half-dozen swing states he needs to win rather than wasting time in places like Wisconsin and CT.
“I think we’re going to sharpen the message”. “Polish is taking a back seat to populism – he’s not going to be the candidate of discipline, he’s going to be the candidate of disruption”.
Trump named Steve Bannon, head of the Breitbart News website, as campaign chief executive officer, a new position.
Lewandowski incident Bannon stirred controversy at Breitbart after one of its reporters clashed with the Trump campaign earlier this year.
Fineman told Beban that since Manafort was brought onto the campaign in March, his approach has not lived up to expectations: “When he was brought in in the spring, it was thought that that meant Donald Trump’s campaign would turn into a normal, recognizable right-of-center Republican campaign”.
“When Trump is who he is, he drives general voters away – people he doesn’t already have”, said Tyler, an MSNBC consultant. The Breitbart readership is likely already with Trump.
“Trump is on his third campaign manager in three months”.
A string of prominent Republicans have announced they will not vote for Mr Trump as media reports swirled about a campaign in crisis and staffers unnerved by a candidate apparently incapable of reeling in crass remarks. She noted that Manafort and deputy Rick Gates are maintaining their jobs.
“Let me ask you about this, you say it is not a shake-up but you’re down”, CNN’s Brianna Keilar tells Cohen.
“For whatever reason, because she’s certainly surrounded by many talented professionals and smart people, for whatever reason, they’re running a campaign about Donald Trump and not about Hillary Clinton’s vision”, she said.
In a statement, the Trump campaign said the announcement comes “at a time of significant growth” that includes “the first major TV ad buy of the general election slated to start later this week”.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump received his first intelligence briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “It’s an expansion at a busy time in the final stretch of the campaign”, Conway was quoted as saying by The Times. And finally, like Trump himself, Breitbart and Bannon have frequently trafficked in all sorts of deranged conspiracy theories from touting that President Obama was not born in America to claiming that the Obama Administration was “importing more hating Muslims”. “With Kellyanne and Steve at the top of the campaign, Mike Pence as Vice President and Senator Jeff Sessions at Donald Trump’s side the Trump campaign is shaping up to be the most ideological campaign since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter”. Trump has largely resisted those pleas and the latest staff changes appear to be a rejection of Manafort’s attempt to tame Trump. Kellems, who briefly worked for Trump’s campaign, said the decision to promote the pollster and hire Bannon suggests Trump “wants to win and is willing to make the changes necessary to do so”. The website specializes in attacking-often in nasty personal terms-Republicans who refuse to assail immigration and trade.
Critics warned that Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was unlikely to make the populist candidate, who has upended the Republican establishment, any more palatable to moderate voters or any less controversial.
It’s interesting that after the shakeup was announced, a couple of news outlets got word that Manafort had tried to stop Trump’s infamous taco bowl tweet on Cinco de Mayo, which some found offensive.
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“Yes, it’s a mistake”, said GOP strategist Rory Cooper.
