Donald Trump Appoints Media Firebrand to Run Campaign

(NYTimes 17th Aug 2016)

Donald J. Trump named as his new campaign chief on Wednesday a conservative media
provocateur whose news organization regularly attacks the Republican Party establishment,
savages Hillary Clinton and encourages Mr. Trumps most pugilistic instincts.

Mr. Trumps decision to make Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of the Breitbart News website, his
campaigns chief executive was a defiant rejection of efforts by longtime Republican hands to
wean him from the bombast and racially charged speech that helped propel him to the
nomination but now threaten his candidacy by alienating the moderate voters who typically
decide the presidency.

Mr. Bannon was appointed a day after the recently ousted Fox News chairman, Roger
Ailes, emerged in an advisory role with Mr. Trump. It was not lost on Republicans in
Washington that two news executives whose outlets had fueled the anti-establishment rebellion
that bedeviled congressional leaders and set the stage for Mr. Trumps nomination were now
directly guiding the partys presidential message and strategy.

Mr. Bannons most recent crusade was his failed attempt to oust the House speaker, Paul D.
Ryan, in this months primary, making his new role atop the Trump campaign particularly
provocative toward Republican leaders in Washington.

Party veterans responded Wednesday with a mix of anger about the damage they saw Mr.
Trump doing to their partys reputation and gallows humor about his apparent inability, or
unwillingness, to run a credible presidential campaign in a year that once appeared promising.

If Trump were actually trying to antagonize supporters and antagonize new, reachable
supporters, what exactly would he be doing differently? asked Dan Senor, a longtime
Republican strategist who advised Mitt Romney and his running mate, Mr. Ryan, in 2012.

Mr. Bannons transition from mischief-maker at Breitbart to the inner circle of the de facto
leader of the Republican Party capped the second shake-up of Mr. Trumps campaign in two
months.

Kellyanne Conway, a veteran pollster and strategist who was already advising Mr. Trump, will
become his campaign manager and is expected to travel with the candidate, filling a void that
opened up when Corey Lewandowski was fired on June 20.

Mr. Trumps loyalists put the best possible face on the changes announced Wednesday, but their
timing, after a New York Times article detailing his advisers frustration at trying to impose
discipline on him, underscored why so many in the party have soured on his prospects: His
decisions are often made in reaction to news coverage.

Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, will retain his title and focus on the political shop but
was widely seen as being sidelined: Mr. Bannon and Ms. Conway have both developed close
relationships with Mr. Trump, and Mr. Bannon is likely to be more amenable to letting him run
the sort of media-focused campaign he prefers.

This is Trump going back to the nativism and nationalism that fueled his rise in the primary,
said Lanhee J. Chen, who was Mr. Romneys policy director in 2012. But its very dangerous to
the future of the party because it only further narrows the appeal of a party whose appeal was
already narrow going into this cycle.

Mr. Chen called Mr. Trumps shift a base reinforcement strategy and noted that it was very
different from the tack of most party nominees, who use the final months of the presidential
race to broaden their appeal in hopes of winning over the maximum number of voters.

But to those on the right who are hoping to permanently shift Republicans away from free-
market conservatism and toward a harder-edged populism, the addition of Mr. Bannon was a
victory for the America First approach they want to ingrain in the party.
 Trump hires 'street fighter' in new shakeup of White House campaign

(Reuters Aug 18th 2016)

U.S. Republican Donald Trump overhauled his presidential campaign team on Wednesday for the second
time in less than two months, hiring the head of a conservative news website to bolster his combative
image and try to reverse poor opinion poll numbers.

Trump named Steve Bannon, head of the Breitbart News website, as campaign chief executive officer, a
new position. He also promoted senior adviser Kellyanne Conway to the post of campaign manager.

The latest shake-up combines Bannon, a conservative flamethrower, with Conway, a measured, data-
driven analyst who might be able to broaden Trump's appeal to women and independent voters.

It offers Trump's team a chance to return to the "let Trump be Trump" style practiced by former campaign
manager Corey Lewandowski that helped Trump, who has never held elective office, win the Republican
presidential nomination for the Nov. 8 election.

Lewandowski, ousted in the last campaign reorganization in June, said on CNN that Bannon was "a street
fighter" like himself. A Trump campaign statement announcing the changes touted a Bloomberg Politics
article that branded Bannon "the most dangerous political operative in America."

Whether that style will work in the fight against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is unclear. Trump, a
New York real estate developer and former reality TV host, has largely been unable to extend his reach
beyond white middle-class voters who pack his rallies.

Trump trails Clinton in national opinion polls and in many battleground states, potentially facing a big defeat
that could also cost Republicans congressional races.

Trump, who relishes revving up crowds with off-the-cuff remarks, drew criticism for comments insulting
women, Muslims and Mexican immigrants during the primary campaign for the Republican nomination.

He has since faced a barrage of criticism from Republicans over his campaign style and his refusal to stick
to a policy message. In particular, he has been rebuked for his prolonged feud with the family of a Muslim
U.S. Army captain who was killed in the Iraq war.

Wednesday's campaign appointments amounted to a demotion for Paul Manafort, who was brought on as
campaign manager in June to bring a more professional touch to Trump's campaign but has struggled to
get the businessman to rein in his freewheeling ways.

Clinton, a former secretary of state who has called Trump temperamentally unsuited for the White House,
said staff shake-ups did nothing to change the candidate and his rhetoric.

"Donald Trump has shown us who he is, he can hire and fire anybody he wants from his campaign, they
can make him read new words from a teleprompter, but he is still the same man who insults Gold Star
families, demeans women, mocks people with disabilities and thinks he knows more about ISIS than our
generals," she told a rally in Ohio.

Conway and Bannon may prove to be opposing forces in Trumps campaign. Conway is analytical and
numbers-driven and often offers a more pragmatic approach to winning campaigns. She is expected to
travel with Trump. Bannon likes to push the limits of polite conversation and revels in taking the fight up a
notch, strategists say.

Bannon was a key figure in producing and promoting a movie called "Clinton Cash" that accused Bill and
Hillary Clinton of doing favors for high-dollar donors to the Clinton Foundation charity, a theme that Trump
has been touching on in his campaign speeches.

The appointment of Bannon suggested Trump was aiming not to tone down his aggressive style but to be
more disciplined in emphasizing themes that resonate strongly with the voters he is trying to court, such as
his tough stance against illegal immigration and withering personal criticism of Clinton.

Conway told Fox News she was advising Trump to take his case directly to the people. With Donald
Trump, he is still his own best messenger because people see him as very authentic.".She has worked to
improve the Republican Party's standing with women voters and to push back on Democratic accusations
that Republicans are waging a "war on women."

The current RealClearPolitics average of national opinion polls puts Clinton six percentage points ahead of
Trump, at 47.2 percent to his 41.2 percent.

Stephen Bannon: can Trump's fiery new campaign chief spark a comeback?

(The Guardian 17th Aug 2016)

The hiring of the Breitbart News chair makes perfect sense the rightwing media website has
spent months stoking the flames of Trumps inflammatory rhetoric

The ascent of Breitbart News veteran Steve Bannon to the top of Trump Tower is explained on the inside as
a chance to let the real Donald loose again, freed from the constraints of traditional party campaign rules by
a likeminded new chief executive.

But to many on the outside, the notion that the campaign, which polls suggest is flailing, has suffered from
excessive caution seems absurd.

The answer for those wondering how Trumps crude populism could hardly get any more gloves off lies in
the background of the new head coach: a bare-knuckle veteran less likely to favour Marquees of Queensbury
rules than those of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Where former campaign chief Paul Manafort brought Republican party approval and the dead-eyed
seriousness of a consultant who helped elect strongmen in Ukraine, Bannon is intended to bring back the
wild spirit of revolution to a candidate who has upset the established order all year.

As executive chairman of rightwing media website Breitbart News, this 60-year-old former investment
banker has already been at the vanguard of a pitchfork revolt that has terrorised both the Republican
mainstream and Democrats alike.

It was Breitbart, for example, that helped expose the sexual proclivities of New York City mayoral candidate
Anthony Weiner. Bannon also helped set up a spin-off thinktank called the Government Accountability
Institute that published a book alleging that the Clintons had pulled strings for foreign donors to their
foundation.

In recent months, it has become the ideological engine house of the Trump train, accused of stoking racial
tensions and fueling the mood of nationalism with a slew of stories on subjects such as uncontrolled
immigration at the US border and the threat of Islamic extremism.
Ostensibly, it is plummeting poll numbers that have rattled the Trump inner circle. But Manaforts
precarious position in charge of the day-to-day campaign cannot have been helped by recent revelations of
his previous life as an adviser to despotic foreign leaders. The most recent allegations of underhand
payments, though fiercely denied, threatened less to taint an often Teflon campaign than to risk upstaging a
boss who likes to reserve mainstream media outrage for himself.

Just as previous campaign chief Corey Lewandowski was jettisoned when his fracas with a Breitbart
reporter threatened to dominate the Trump media cycle, Manafort has been sidelined before the messenger
could become the message.

However like Lewandowski, he remains in the Trump orbit, nominally in his old role as campaign
chairman. A growing list of rightwing media moguls skilled in the dark arts will also be there as the
campaign gears up for its last-ditch assault on Clinton in the crucial weeks after Labor Day.

Whether the revolving list of shadowy characters can rescue a campaign that appears to be in freefall is
another matter of course. Polls suggest Trump is fast losing ground in all the key battleground states where
he once appeared to be challenging Clinton. But the hope is that it is time to return to what Trump does
best: playing the character of Donald Trump in the movie about Donald Trump with Bannon as the new
executive producer.

http://www.gallup.com/topic/election_2016.aspx