August 3, 2016

Trouble in the Trump campaign

John Harwood, CNBC - I exchanged messages Tuesday evening with a longtime ally of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whom I asked about who was calling the shots in the campaign. The response indicated that Manafort, a veteran of Republican politics brought in this spring for the transition from primaries to the general election, has lost control over his candidate. "Manafort not challenging (Trump) anymore," Manafort's ally wrote. "Mailing it in. Staff suicidal."
 
Political Wire - “Donald Trump aides and people close to his campaign are increasingly frustrated by his insistence on waging various fights that steer him off message,” CNN reports.

One knowledgeable Republican said that some of Trump’s campaign staff — even campaign manager Paul Manafort — “feel like they are wasting their time.”

“It has been relayed to Trump that he is losing what tenuous support he has in the party establishment, and that already skeptical donors are heading for the exits or telling the senior team can’t count on serious progress when he looks so toxic.”

NBC News - Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is "apoplectic" over Donald Trump's refusal to back House Speaker Paul Ryan or Sen. John McCain, a top Republican source said.

Priebus called several Trump staffers, including campaign manager Paul Manafort, to express his "extreme displeasure" with Trump's comments, the source with knowledge of the conversations told NBC News.

Trump, in an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, said of Ryan "I'm not quite there yet" — echoing language used by Ryan when he was reluctant to endorse Trump in May. Ryan eventually endorsed the GOP nominee. A spokesperson for Ryan said Tuesday neither Ryan nor anyone on his team sought an endorsement from Trump.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trump's courage in standing up to an utterly corrupt and venal Republican establishment is helping him a great deal, and drawing a lot of support from honest Republicans, independents, and even Dems who are too honest and educated to support a war criminal. He knows just what's he's doing.

Anonymous said...

He's crazy like a fox.

The Dems and the media keep trying to gin up these idiotic "gotcha" stories completely unaware of how this all playing out for the people who will actually vote. The media is in panic mode and Obama is showing his desperation in attacking Trump directly. The polls are not reflecting the reality of the voting sentiment out there.

Barring some kind of October Surprise, he will probably win.

Oh and that next Wikileaks offering re The Clinton Crime Foundation will probably help to finish her off. Good riddance.

Anonymous said...

There is a concern whether a candidate can win the presidency without a formal campaign structure. If Trump and Pence pull it off, then the media will have pulled a coup over the donors. This does not reflect democracy but rather the ascendancy among the plutocrats of the media sector as a player, rather than as client of the donors. Trump is a tv actor playing tv's endorsed presidential candidate, elevating the news to the profit center of reality programming.