August 17, 2016

Donald Trump Overhauls His Campaign Team. Again.

Paul Manafort gets demoted and Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon will become campaign CEO.

You're demoted!Chris Pizzello/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As Donald Trump loses ground in the polls to Hillary Clinton and his campaign continues to falter, he is once more shaking up his political operation. Declaring “I want to win” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published early Wednesday morning, Trump announced that he is bringing on veteran Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manger and Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart, as chief executive officer of the Trump team.

Paul Manafort, who has been running the Trump campaign since the ouster of Corey Lewandowski, will continue in his role as campaign chairman, but the reshuffle signals that his authority will be significantly curtailed, if he has not been altogether sidelined. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that a “secret ledger” listed $12.7 million in cash payments to Manafort from Ukraine’s pro-Russian ruling party, which he advised up until recently. Manafort denied receiving the payments, but his controversial background as a lobbyist who has specialized in representing some of the world’s most notorious strongmen and dictators has dogged him ever since he signed on with Trump. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Manafort and another Trump aide, Rick Gates, had failed to disclose their efforts to influence US policy on behalf of the Ukrainian governing party of Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s ousted leader, possibly circumventing rules requiring “foreign agents” to register with the US government. But it may have been Manafort’s inability to rein in Trump, as much as his past clientele, that led to his de facto demotion.

Conway—whose roster of clients has included Newt Gingrich and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence—has been advising the Trump campaign since at least July. Prior to signing on with Trump, Conway backed his rival Ted Cruz. She served as a strategist for Keep the Promise I, a pro-Cruz super-PAC bankrolled by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer that ran attack ads against Trump during the primary campaign, including one blasting the real estate mogul for supposedly supporting government-run health care.

Along with Conway, Bannon also has close ties to Mercer, who Politico has reported is a top investor in Breitbart. A Navy veteran and former Goldman Sachs banker, Bannon has no political experience to speak of, though his news outlet has been one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders throughout the campaign. This has led to some uncomfortable moments for the conservative news outlet, including this spring when Corey Lewandowski roughly yanked then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields away from Trump at a campaign rally as she tried to ask the candidate a question. Breitbart went out of its way to bolster the Trump campaign’s version of events, at the expense of its own reporter. Fields ended up resigning and is now a reporter at the Huffington Post.

According to Politico, Bannon has been “quietly advising people around the Trump campaign for months,” an unusual move for a top executive at a news organization covering the presidential campaign. Bannon’s outlet didn’t even get the scoop of his new role with Trump. After the news broke, it ran the AP’s version of the story.

* This is a developing story.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones’ journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now.

Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

Please consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones’ journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now.

Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

Please consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate