As Donald Trump’s campaign hit a new level of chaos this week, people in and around the campaign raced to assign blame.
Trump’s
campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is coming under increasing criticism
from a variety of sources. Much of this is due to leftover ill will
between the 67-year-old political operative and those still loyal to the
man he deposed as campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
But
even some with no loyalty to Lewandowski have said Manafort must accept
some blame for Trump’s erratic performance in recent days and weeks,
during which his poll numbers have taken a nosedive.
“A
big part of being the man in charge is managing the candidate, and he’s
got a tiger by the tail,” said one source who has known Manafort for
years.
A
second source, a campaign insider in the past, said, “If you judge a
campaign manager by whether they manage the candidate, you’d have to say
[Manafort’s] failed.”
But
the campaign’s floundering and lack of coherent message “starts with
the candidate,” the Manafort associate said. Another longtime friend of
Manafort’s said it was clear that the campaign manager isn’t calling the
shots.
“Trump’s not listening to him, obviously. Paul’s certainly not advising him to do this stuff,” Manafort’s friend said.
Trump
has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past week, all of his own
making. He has repeatedly criticized the parents of a slain U.S. Army
captain who spoke at the Democratic convention, then joked about
accepting a Purple Heart medal from a veteran. And he has revived
tensions with House Speaker Paul Ryan by withholding his endorsement in
Tuesday’s primary. (On Friday evening, however, Trump endorsed Ryan.)
“Paul’s
still a one-man band,” the Manafort associate said. “You gotta have a
campaign. You gotta have a media team. You gotta have pollsters feeding
in information so you can use it. You need a ground game.
“This whole thing needs to pick up. I still think it can.”
One
leading Republican policy adviser who spoke to Yahoo News expressed
dismay with Trump’s “really rough week” and what was described as
“unforced errors” that coincided with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton
pulling ahead in the polls.
“It is really frustrating. Hillary is such a flawed option that it should be a lot easier than it’s been,” the adviser said.
In
the adviser’s view, Trump’s success in winning the nomination on his
own terms — with a steady stream of combative tweets and angry
off-the-cuff speeches — makes it harder for aides and critics to
persuade him to change his approach.
“The
hope that people had was that he was crazy like a fox. You know, he
seemed to be doing all these things that made no sense, but looking back
it worked. There’s a whole Napoleon analogy. Three times in a row,
Napoleon gambled everything and won, so it’s a little hard for the staff
to say, ‘Don’t go to Russia,’” the adviser said. “Somebody who’s that
wildly correct has a hard time taking his critics seriously, and his
critics have a hard time getting through to him.”
The
adviser was especially upset about Trump’s feud with the family of the
fallen soldier, which they called “disgusting.” Trump’s comments and
failure to “cut his losses” after the initial backlash left the adviser
wondering about the state of the campaign team.
“How
do you not have an internal governor who tells you that is out of line
in the most ridiculous way? It’s just awfully difficult to not get
that.”
Another
one of Trump’s many bad headlines this week was the claim by MSNBC host
Joe Scarborough that the candidate has asked members of his team why
the U.S. can’t use nuclear weapons against its enemies. This goes
against decades of policy that has focused on nuclear disarmament with
the goal of preventing these weapons from ever being used. The campaign
has disputed Scarborough’s account, but Trump has previously expressed
interest in using nuclear weapons against the jihadist group Islamic
State.
The
leading Republican policy adviser who talked to Yahoo News expressed
disbelief that Trump doesn’t seem to have familiarized himself with the
position every modern president and White House hopeful has held on
nuclear weapons. Overall, the adviser said Trump’s recent remarks and
behavior have them wondering whether his entire campaign is a scam to
aid his business ventures.
“There’s
this other thing here where maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t running for
president, he was just running to raise his name ID because of the value
of his property,” the adviser said. “Is he really running for
president? Is he running to raise Trump name ID? If you were really
running for president, you might have spent time preparing. And here’s a
guy who hasn’t been briefed and never made an effort to be briefed on
nuclear weapons.”
Trump
has continued to play the publicity and provocation game in the press.
But despite his lack of focus and self-control, some in the campaign
have blamed Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, for not stopping the
self-destructive cycle. Some think the two operatives are simply now
riding out the campaign.
“Paul and Rick are in it for themselves. They’re gonna get a big lobbying contract after this,” the Trump campaign insider said.
Manafort’s
regular presence on Sunday talk shows and his outsized reputation in
the press as a master of the dark arts of politics — going back to his
time working in the Ukraine for a candidate loyal to Russian President
Vladimir Putin — have irked some in the campaign.
The
insider detailed several complaints about the campaign’s organization,
including the fact that many state parties, including in key
battlegrounds, still do not have what is referred to in campaign
language as “collateral material” — yard signs, bumper stickers,
T-shirts, flyers and other materials for canvassing door to door.
The
Republican Party of Virginia, for example, said they did not have Trump
yard signs yet, but were hoping to receive them “any day.” In New
Hampshire, the state GOP said they are all out of signs and hoped to
have more soon.
State
by state budgets were not even approved as late as last week, this
source said. Coming out of a “not great” convention, “Mr. Trump found
out about this last week and went apoplectic.”
“We’re
gonna have a robust 50-state ground game? They have state directors,
but do they have ground games? No. There are 17 battleground states. Do
they have offices in all of them? No,” the source said.
The
Trump campaign has aggressively pushed back against rumors of
dysfunction swirling around the campaign. In a conversation with Yahoo
News on Friday evening, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said the “notion of
campaign discord or campaign disconnect is just absolute pure fiction.”
“Mr.
Trump is the one who’s in charge of his campaign and Paul Manafort is
in charge of implementing that vision and overseeing campaign
operations. Mr. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing, knows exactly where
he wants to go. We have a unified team and everyone is on the same page
in terms of next steps,” Miller said, adding, “We’ve seen anecdotal
evidence that things have been going well over the past few days, but
also empirical evidence. Reuters just released a poll
showing Clinton’s lead over Trump has narrowed to less than three
points. That shows the elasticity of this campaign and the problems
Hillary Clinton has running for a third term when everyone in this
country so clearly wants a new direction.”
Miller further said he believes the rumors of discord are a false “narrative” spread by the Clinton campaign.
But
the Trump insider said that communication inside the campaign is
broken; the New York office inside Trump Tower, the Washington office
run by political director Jim Murphy and by Rick Dearborn, a top aide to
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, and the candidate and his entourage aboard
Trump’s plane are isolated from one another.
Tellingly,
the Trump insider argued that Lewandowski was better able to restrain
Trump’s tendencies to sabotage himself with outrageous or offensive
comments, even though Lewandowski’s philosophy was to “let Trump be
Trump.”
“You
never saw a meltdown last this long under Corey’s tenure,” the insider
source said. “I think [Lewandowski] was misinterpreted as a body man.
The point of flying with [Trump] is whoever dominates his ear, he
listens.”
On
the plane with Trump most regularly are spokeswoman Hope Hicks, social
media director Dan Scavino, policy adviser Stephen Miller, advance
director George Gigicos, advance man John McEntee and personal bodyguard
Keith Schiller.
But
Trump also awards outsized status to those who he sees on television,
the Manafort associate said, pointing out that Kellyanne Conway, who
worked for a super-PAC backing Sen. Ted Cruz’s candidacy, is now “at the
grown-up table,” working out of Trump Tower in New York.
“Trump loves her. He sees her on TV,” he said. “Trump listens to people who go on TV.”
Manafort
does not usually travel with Trump, instead staying in New York trying
to organize a chaotic campaign that has relied for much of Trump’s
candidacy solely on the reality TV personality’s ability to function as a one-man “media organization” — as Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith put it — through social media and TV appearances.
The
Trump insider said he was talking to a reporter “strictly out of love
of the candidate, which is weird that you’d have to go speak to
reporters so a candidate can find out what’s happening in his own
organization.”
He
and many in the Trump campaign, he said, are “hoping and praying that
[Trump] reads this and says, ‘Something’s got to change.’”
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