Weary GOP hopeful Trump staff shake-up triggers new momentum

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.

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck described Bannon as “quite possibly the most risky guy in all of American politics”, at about the 2:05 mark.

It’s the campaign’s second reset in as many months. While Manafort had been trying to put the melting creamsicle back in the freezer in the hopes it would come back out a mainstream Republican candidate, Bannon has apparently convinced The Orange One that he needs to double-down on his hardline rhetoric on immigration and trade.

Despite the new advertising investment, Trump is woefully behind: Clinton’s campaign has spent more than $75 million on ads in the weeks since she effectively locked up the nomination in early June, according to Kantar Media’s political ad tracker.

Bannon has been involved with Breitbart.com since the site’s founding in 2007, but he took on a more active role after the death of site’s namesake, Andrew Breitbart, in 2012.

The lawmakers say Trump’s returns could disclose his financial interests in foreign countries, among other things, and seeing them is a pressing national interest.

“I think he will be very happy with the choice”, she said. “Enough with the pandering!”

Critics accused him last week of inciting violence against Clinton in a remark about the right to bear arms, and media reports have swirled about a campaign in crisis and a candidate apparently incapable of reeling in crass remarks. “If you look at Stephen Bannon and what they’ve built at Breitbart, it’s win at all costs”, Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager who was sacked two months ago in a previous reshuffle, told CNN on Wednesday. “The Clintons are grifters”. In speeches on Monday and Tuesday, though, Trump called into question Clinton’s health more explicitly.

This election season, the site has tweaked Republican establishment figures like Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin and fulminated against Mrs. Clinton, while acting as a reliable booster of Trump. A former Goldman Sachs banker, Bannon does not have presidential campaign experience. He also executive produced movies, like The Indian Runner starring Sean Penn in 1991 and Titus with Anthony Hopkins in 1999.

The other passion of the Mercers and Bannon: data.

Bannon is also the man behind the documentary Clinton Cash, a controversial film based on the best-selling book by Peter Schweizer, investigating the Clintons’ finances. He told THR that the film will eventually appear on about five TV networks, as well as digital outlets.

But Trump’s reshuffling signaled how he has chafed under the guidance of Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, one of the few people around the real estate mogul who was unafraid to confront him about the shortcomings of his candidacy. Kellyanne Conway was promoted to campaign manager from his former position as pollster and chief adviser to Trump.

Shapiro said that he’d joked that Bannon would eventually be running the Trump campaign – a joke that became reality. But that doesn’t mean he’s not pivoting from politics altogether-towards media, and the fearless new world of Trump Media, LLC. “He has a 66 percent unfavorable rating, so now he will do much more of what got him there”.

“I think it helps us to be a little bit behind, and we are”, she said. “They are a bolt of energy”.

The shift to new leadership may not be a good sign at this stage of a campaign, but some Republican strategists said it was not too late for Trump.

Donald Trump says he’ll “take a very serious look” at Congressional term limits if he’s elected to the White House. “Bannon is incredibly passionate about what he believes in”. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: He’s an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination.