Donald Trump shakes up his team again
IN A bid to signal readiness to govern, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, named the heads of her White House transition team on August 16th. The team—which will vet potential senior members of a Clinton administration and begin policy planning, in a standard practice for major party nominees—will be chaired by Ken Salazar, a centrist former senator from Colorado and ex-interior secretary, distrusted on the left for his pro-trade and pro-business instincts.
A day later, signalling his readiness to wage a bare-knuckle, brutally populist slugging-match to keep Mrs Clinton from power, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, announced a shake-up of his own team, appointing as his campaign chief executive Stephen Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, a hard-right, conspiracy-tinged website. Aides to Mr Trump told the New York Times that the businessman is also being advised on his upcoming debates with Mrs Clinton by Roger Ailes, a vastly experienced media strategist who cut his teeth teaching Richard Nixon how to appear more likeable on television. Mr Ailes resigned as chairman of Fox News in July amid allegations of sexual harassment by female former employees.
his tale of two campaigns came as opinion polls showed Mr Trump continuing to shed support among college-educated whites, married women and other voter blocs that have reliably skewed Republican in successive presidential elections. In interviews, Mr Trump has seethed at media reports that his campaign staff and prominent Republicans yearn for him to “pivot” to a more presidential approach, involving scripted attacks on Mrs Clinton read from a teleprompter. A leading advocate of such a pivot, Paul Manafort, remains Mr Trump’s campaign chairman, but his clout appears diminished by the recruitment of Mr Bannon and a new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who has worked for Mike Pence, Mr Trump’s running-mate, and Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. It does not help Mr Manafort that he has spent days fending off reports about his time as a highly paid consultant to a Ukrainian political party with close ties to Russia.
Mr Trump still draws large, frenzied crowds to rallies, and appears unwilling to abandon the style—involving appeals to America-first nationalism, doomy talk of crimes committed by immigrants, vengeful attacks on a “lying” press and claims that the November election may be “rigged”—that reliably fires up such gatherings. After all, that approach won him the presidential primary contest. He maintains hefty leads among his most loyal voter blocs, notably older whites without a college degree. But paths to general-election victory involve winning an increasingly daunting number of such voters, in such battlegrounds as Florida, Pennsylvania and the post-industrial Midwest, where his polls are going the wrong way.
Mr Trump calls Mr Bannon and other hires “fantastic people who know how to win”. Republican leaders in Congress—routinely denounced as establishment shills and enemies of the working man by Breitbart News—may have different descriptions for the new Trump team.
A day later, signalling his readiness to wage a bare-knuckle, brutally populist slugging-match to keep Mrs Clinton from power, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, announced a shake-up of his own team, appointing as his campaign chief executive Stephen Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, a hard-right, conspiracy-tinged website. Aides to Mr Trump told the New York Times that the businessman is also being advised on his upcoming debates with Mrs Clinton by Roger Ailes, a vastly experienced media strategist who cut his teeth teaching Richard Nixon how to appear more likeable on television. Mr Ailes resigned as chairman of Fox News in July amid allegations of sexual harassment by female former employees.
Mr Trump still draws large, frenzied crowds to rallies, and appears unwilling to abandon the style—involving appeals to America-first nationalism, doomy talk of crimes committed by immigrants, vengeful attacks on a “lying” press and claims that the November election may be “rigged”—that reliably fires up such gatherings. After all, that approach won him the presidential primary contest. He maintains hefty leads among his most loyal voter blocs, notably older whites without a college degree. But paths to general-election victory involve winning an increasingly daunting number of such voters, in such battlegrounds as Florida, Pennsylvania and the post-industrial Midwest, where his polls are going the wrong way.
Mr Trump calls Mr Bannon and other hires “fantastic people who know how to win”. Republican leaders in Congress—routinely denounced as establishment shills and enemies of the working man by Breitbart News—may have different descriptions for the new Trump team.
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