Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After Tumultuous

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Paul Manafort, installed as the chief strategist for Donald J. Trump’s campaign after the firing of his original campaign manager, handed in his resignation on Friday morning.

Mr. Manafort left nearly a week after a New York Times report about tumult within the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign helped precipitate a shakeup of the campaign’s leadership. His departure reflects repeated efforts to steady a campaign that has been frequently roiled by the behavior of its tempestuous first-time candidate.

Mr. Manafort was also dogged by reports about secretive efforts he made to help the former pro-Russian government in Ukraine, where he has worked on and off over several years. He had also become viewed with trepidation by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a major force within the campaign, amid a number of false starts since the Republican National Convention, according to three people briefed on the matter.

“This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign,” Mr. Trump said in a statement released by the campaign. “I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process. Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”

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Mr. Manafort was first brought to the campaign in March as Mr. Trump was facing a protracted delegate slog in his effort to capture the Republican nomination. He ended up taking over the campaign two months ago after Mr. Trump’s then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, became a distraction to the candidate and his children with a string of high-profile fights.

Mr. Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, is expected to remain on the campaign, the sources said. Mr. Manafort’s friends said privately that he urged core staff members who he brought on to remain with the campaign.

Last weekend, Mr. Trump decided to install Stephen K. Bannon as his chief executive officer and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser, as the new campaign manager. That followed an emergency meeting called after the Times story last Sunday on the frequent and troubled efforts by Mr. Trump’s top advisers to curtail his pugilistic instincts.

Thomas Barrack, the financier and friend of Mr. Trump who helped bring Mr. Manafort into the campaign, expressed regret about the turn of events involving Mr. Manafort.

“I’ve known him since we were in college, he’s a first-class person, he’s an amazing individual and he has been the lead architect in trying to seamlessly put together the institutional side of this campaign,” Mr. Barrack said in a brief interview. “I think the architecture he put together will continue to serve the campaign well, but I’m sorry to see him go.”

After he was initially hired by Mr. Trump, Mr. Manafort helped quash uprisings among delegates that, even if they wouldn’t imperil Mr. Trump’s ability to get the nomination, would have been an embarrassing distraction at the nominating convention.

the Donald Trump Appoints Media Firebrand to Run Campaign

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. Trump’s most pugilistic instincts.

Mr. Trump’s decision to make Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of the Breitbart News website, his campaign’s 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.

It also formally completed a merger between the most strident elements of the conservative news media and Mr. Trump’s campaign, which was incubated and fostered in their boisterous coverage of his rise.

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. Trump’s nomination were now directly guiding the party’s presidential message and strategy.

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Mr. Bannon’s most recent crusade was his failed attempt to oust the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, in this month’s 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 party’s 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.

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Terry Sullivan, who ran Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, said Mr. Trump and Breitbart “both play to the lowest common denominator of people’s fears. It’s a match made in heaven.”

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Kellyanne Conway, a veteran pollster and Mr. Trump’s new campaign manager. CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

For Mr. Trump, though, bringing in Mr. Bannon was the political equivalent of ordering comfort food. Only last week, Mr. Trump publicly expressed ambivalence about modifying his style. “I think I may do better the other way,” he told Time magazine. “They would like to see it be a little bit different, a little more modified. I don’t like to modify.”

Mr. Bannon’s 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. Trump’s 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. Trump’s 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 an exciting day for Team Trump,” Mr. Manafort wrote in an internal staff memo. “I remain the campaign chairman and chief strategist, providing the big-picture, long-range campaign vision,” he added.

On a conference call Wednesday morning, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said the moves had been well received, along with a speech on crime reduction that he gave in Wisconsin, pointing to favorable coverage on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe.”

Under Mr. Bannon, Breitbart News has been an amen corner for Mr. Trump, and perhaps more relentless than any other conservative outlet in its criticism of the Republican establishment.

But what most distresses mainstream party strategists about the union of Mr. Trump’s campaign with Breitbart’s guiding vision is the brand of populism that the website has advocated, and that Mr. Trump has championed.

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