Donald Trump’s campaign shakeup announced last night is controversial not only because he chose a right-wing website publisher to lead the team but he also may have completed a pivot away from the Trump outsider approach toward wooing voters.
Instead of appealing to a broad sense of populism, Trump appears to be trying to right the ship by focusing on the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity constituencies. The new campaign CEO is Steve Bannon, the leader of the ultraconservative Breitbart news site that specializes in outlandish claims and conspiracy theories.
From all appearances, Bannon will lead the struggling Trump campaign as a hot-tempered provocateur. Politico quotes a former Breitbart spokesman who said Bannon “is prone to a lot of tirades.”
Instead of the anticipated pivot toward a milder, more seasoned Trump, we get this: “Hey, pass the hot sauce.”
Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, an outspoken Trump supporter and a former Goldman Sachs banker, will assume the new position of campaign chief executive. Trump also chose Kellyanne Conway, a GOP pollster and strategist, to become campaign manager. Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who was brought in just two months ago, will continue to carry that title but his demotion suggests that the nominee has cast aside Manafort’s efforts to have Trump run a more mainstream general election campaign.
So, a news corporation executive and ex-Wall Street banker, a veteran GOP pollster/strategist, and Manafort, whose tenure in politics dates back 40 years, including quite a bit of potentially scandalous work for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs. This is the new Trump team.
Essentially, the billionaire candidate has largely turned away from his primary season persona as a populist outsider, a self-financed (which was never true) candidate who is his own man.
At this point in the campaign, in some states the RNC is essentially running the Trump election effort. His economic advisory team is filled with Wall Street and corporate moguls. He has raised $91.4 million from GOP donors in a matter of weeks. His pick for a running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has a long insider history and he has some of his own right-wing ideas (for example, his claim that a rape exemption for abortion will encourage women to get raped).
News reports indicate that Trump has been receiving advice from Bannon and Roger Ailes, who was recently ousted as the Fox News chief.
Even the staid Wall Street Journal conveyed the enormity of Trump’s decision to hire the Breitbart boss:
“The appointment of Mr. Bannon is likely to stir its own controversy. Breitbart News, which he runs, is a freewheeling populist news site that has served as a kind of platform for Trump supporters.”
Imagine a Hillary Clinton campaign shakeup in which HBO’s Bill Maher was brought in to lead the way and then one gets a sense of how far out of the mainstream this decision is – except Bannon’s penchant for peddling conspiracy theories and fake news far exceeds the bloviating of comedian Maher.
Numerous conservative writers reacted with dismay – or worse – at the choice, which came many months after much of the media had concluded that Breitbart was “in the tank” for Trump and not true to its readers.
In the run-up to the recent Wisconsin primary the Breitbart folks claimed that one of their favorite targets, House Speaker Paul Ryan, faced a rough re-election at the hands of a neophyte challenger. Numerous Breitbart stories reported that Ryan was in trouble and “running scared.” The publication told its readers that Ryan’s lead was down to nine points. He won by an overwhelming 60-point margin.
Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” a show which skewers biased journalism on the left and right, offered this assessment this morning:
I mean some of these men are masters of the dark arts, of political dark arts. And that’s what people should understand, for example, about Steve Bannon. When I saw this news overnight, my first thought was, OK, nothing is off limits now. Nothing in this campaign is off limits now. We’re going to see the most fringy ideas, the most right-wing ideas, bubble up to the surface in a way we haven’t even seen before in this election.
