Since joining the Trump campaign May 19, 67-year-old veteran political consultant Paul Manafort played the grownup, a seasoned campaign professional since President Gerald R. Ford. Replacing 42-year-old campaign manager Cory Lewandowski June 21, Trump didn’t realize that with age comes baggage when he assigned Manafort the duty to running the campaign and mending fences with the GOP before the July 18 Republican National Convention in Cleveland At the time he took over for Lewandowski, Trump’s nomination was in doubt with the “Never Trump” movement in full swing. While Manafort’s recent baggage, consulting and taking cash from ousted Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, hadn’t come out, Manafort mended fences before Cleveland, guaranteeing Trump the eventual Republican nomination.
With multiple news stories about Manafort getting $12.7 million from Yanukovich’s slush fund, the urbane political consultant became radioactive. Appointing Aug. 17 conservative news site Breitbart Executive Editor Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO and CNN conservative pundit Kellyanne Conway as manager, it was matter of time before Manafort stepped down. “This morning Paul Manafort offered and I accepted his resignation from the campaign. I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get use where we are today, and in particular his work guiding use through the delegate and convention process. Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success,” said Trump. Once Manafort was linked to the Ukraine scandal, his resignation was inevitable. Whatever Manafort did in the Ukraine, his controversy became headline news, a campaign distraction.
Down by six percent in aggregate polling, Trump had no choice but to upgrade his campaign team. Manafort was an old-school political consultant, incapable of challenging 68-year-old Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s superior propaganda machine. Since the RNC convention ended July 22, Manafort was unable to stop Hillary’s relentless propaganda blitzkrieg, painting Trump as dangerous racist, watching his post-convention lead evaporate into today’s six-point deficit. Hiring Bannon and Conway should challenge Hillary’s info-war supremacy, challenging the campaign’s narrative. How Bannon and Conway plan to deal with egregious media bias against Trump is anyone’s guess. Bannon has his work cut out for him challenging Hillary’s “rapid response” team, turning Trump’s words into controversial gaffes.
Embarrassing press reports of Manafort allegedly taking millions from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich made him today’s news story, not good for a covert political operative. Accepting his resignation, Trump puts his faith in 62-year-old Harvard Business School MBA former Breitbart editor Stephen Bannon, whose real-life experience in investment banking and the movie business serves him well as Trumps’ campaign CEO. Known as a “street fighter,” Bannon’s just the kind of person who won’t back down from the Hillary’s propaganda onslaught. Trump has less than three months to turn things around or face a humiliating defeat. After dispatching 16 Republican candidates in the primaries, Trump hasn’t successfully pivoted to the general election, leaving his campaign scrambling. Bannon and Conway look to take the fight to Hillary’s info wars..
Turning Manfort’s resignation into political fodder, Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa ripped Manafort for working against U.S. interests in Ukraine. “Mr. Manafort is someone who spent the last decades working against our nation’s foreign policy interests overseas, as most recently demonstrated in Ukraine when he worked for Putin’s former puppet President Viktor Yanukovich,” said Chalupa. Chalupa says nothing about President Barack Obama and Hillary’s abysmal relationship with Russia, the worst since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Manafort worked to improve Yanukovich’s public relations with the West. Manafort had nothing to do with the Feb. 22, 2014 Kiev coup that toppled Yanukovich, leading to Russia’s March 1, 2014 annexation of Crimea. Manafort didn’t work against U.S. interests, he improved U.S.-Ukranian-Russian relations.
Becoming his own news story, Manafort had to go regardless of how his situation eventually turns out. Since joining Trump May 19, Manafort helped mend fences with GOP insiders, silencing the once powerful “Never Trump” movement. Judging by how easily Trump won the GOP nomination in Cleveland, Manafort did a brilliant job working with 44-year-old Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Bannon and Conway’s new challenge is to aggressively confront Hillary’s pernicious propaganda machine, feeding the liberal press one lie-after-another. Adding Bannon and Conway gives Trump the best chance of neutralizing Hillary’s “rapid response” communication team, sending Trump into a nosedive since the Democratic National
Convention. Manafort got Trump the GOP nomination, now its time for Bannon and Conway win on Nov. 8.
