Chafing at criticism, Donald Trump brings in cheerleaders likely to tell him the road to victory is paved with orange bricks.
A Trump campaign that has seesawed between inexperienced loyalists and longtime party flaks seesawed back again early Wednesday morning as campaign chairman and erstwhile foreign lobbyist Paul Manafort was layered between Breitbart CEO Stephen Bannon, now serving as CEO of the Trump campaign, and newly named campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
“This is a reversion,” says a top Trump campaign aide. Manafort’s predecessor atop the Trump organization was 40-year-old Corey Lewandowski, who pioneered the hands-off managerial maxim “Let Trump be Trump.” The shakeup represents not just a reversion but an intensification of the media-driven strategy by which Trump bested 16 adversaries in the Republican primary. At Breitbart, Bannon has been leading a brigade of vociferous Trump defenders, and like his new boss, Bannon is a media-savvy operator who understands the value of shock and awe. And with Conway at the helm, the notoriously poll-obsessed candidate now has a veteran pollster running his operation. Trump is being Trump.
As such, the move is also a rejection by Trump of efforts to give him a more presidential bearing. The campaign announced on Wednesday that, in contrast to the scripted remarks Trump delivered Monday and Tuesday, he will hold back-to-back rallies — his stock-in-trade during the primary season — on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It’s but one signal that Trump is also shedding all pretenses that he will pivot in a general election.
Gone too is any pretense of objectivity from some elements of the conservative media, including Breitbart and parts of Fox News. Bannon’s elevation marks a formal merger of what has come to be known as the alt-right media and the Trump campaign. The former helped incubate the populism and nationalism to which Trump gave voice on the campaign trail. The New York Times reported Tuesday that former Fox News president and CEO Roger Ailes is advising Trump ahead of the presidential debates. The news makes perfect sense. On his watch, many noticed that the network’s primetime hours took on a decidedly Trumpian tilt, and there’s a sense that things have come full circle.
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Republican Media Complex!
Little Birdie tells me Trump's folks are saying at least 2 Russian billionaires are lined up to fund Trump's post-election media endeavor.
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) August 18, 2016
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