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Donald Trump Turns to Combative Breitbart Executive in Staff Shake-Up Donald Trump Appoints Media Firebrand to Run Campaign
(about 4 hours later)
LAS VEGAS — Donald J. Trump has shaken up his presidential campaign for the second time in two months, hiring a top executive from the conservative website Breitbart News and promoting a senior adviser in an effort to right his faltering 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.
Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, will become the Republican campaign’s chief executive, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser and pollster for Mr. Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, will become the campaign manager. 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.
Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, will retain his title, and his deputy, Rick Gates, is expected to receive a new one. 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.
The news, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was confirmed early Wednesday by Ms. Conway in a brief interview, but she rejected the idea that the changes amounted to a shake-up and said that Mr. Manafort was not being diminished. 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.
“It’s an expansion at a busy time in the final stretch of the campaign,” she said. 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.
“We met as the ‘core four’ today,” Ms. Conway added, referring to herself, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates. 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.
People briefed on the move said that it reflected Mr. Trump’s realization that his campaign was at a crisis point. But it also indicates that the candidate — who has chafed at making the types of changes his current aides have asked for, even though he has acknowledged they need to occur — has decided to embrace his aggressive style for the duration of the race, come what may. “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.
Both Ms. Conway and Mr. Bannon, whose news organization has been very favorable to Mr. Trump since he entered the primaries, are close with Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the father-and-daughter conservative donors who have become allies of the candidate and are funding a “super PAC” that is working against Hillary Clinton. 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.”
Ms. Conway has experience in presidential primary races, but a role in a general election represents a new one for her. She is well liked by Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, who had been serving as the de facto campaign manager. And she is a veteran pollster and strategist whom Mr. Trump trusts. 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.”
A frequent cable news presence who views the campaign’s battles with the news media as a distraction, Ms. Conway now is expected to travel with Mr. Trump, filling a void created when Corey Lewandowski, his combative former campaign manager, was fired on June 20. 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.
Mr. Bannon has no experience with political campaigns, but he represents the type of bare-knuckled fighter that the candidate had in Mr. Lewandowski. And he shares many of Mr. Trump’s hard-edge, nationalist and populist views. 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. Bannon has been a supporter of Mr. Trump’s pugilistic instincts, which the candidate has made clear in interviews he is uncertain about suppressing. He is also deeply mistrustful of the political establishment, and his website has often been critical of Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader. 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.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who has become a close Trump adviser, has also urged the candidate to dig in and prepare to fight harder, and in a more focused way, in what has quickly become one of the nastiest presidential campaigns in modern United States history. 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.
Mr. Manafort announced the changes in a conference call Wednesday morning and sounded upbeat, according to one person briefed on the call. He has told others that he is content with the changes and does not consider them destabilizing. “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.
Mr. Manafort, who was hired to steer Mr. Trump through what appeared to be a protracted fight for delegates, rose in power after repeated clashes with Mr. Lewandowski. On a conference call Wednesday morning, Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said the moves had been well received, pointing to favorable coverage on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe.”
Mr. Lewandowski was ultimately fired with the help of Mr. Trump’s adult children, who believed the campaign manager was trying to spread negative stories about Mr. Kushner. 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.
Mr. Lewandowski, now a paid CNN commentator, has denied doing so, and he and Mr. Trump still speak frequently, with the candidate seeking his advice. 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.
Mr. Lewandowski’s troubles began, in part, when he was accused by a female Breitbart reporter, who worked for Mr. Bannon, of grabbing her roughly after a news conference at one of Mr. Trump’s Florida properties. Mr. Lewandowski was charged with assault, but prosecutors declined to proceed with the case, which was dropped. Mr. Bannon has overseen a site that is focused primarily on pushing Republicans away from what it calls a globalist agenda and toward a hard-line and often overtly racial one, railing against what it sees as the threats of free trade, Hispanic migration and Islamist terrorism.
People briefed on the reshuffling were adamant that Mr. Trump’s children would seek to block a return by Mr. Lewandowski. And they insisted that staff departures resulting from the changes would be few. “This is Trump going back to the nativism and nationalism that fueled his rise in the primary,” said Lanhee J. Chen, who was Mr. Romney’s policy director in 2012. “But it’s 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. Trump has bucked efforts to rein in his impulsive behavior, committing repeated gaffes after telling his aides he planned to adopt a more presidential tone. Mr. Chen called Mr. Trump’s 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.
His behavior has angered the party’s top figures, who have openly expressed concern about preserving Republican majorities in the House and Senate in light of Mr. Trump’s performance in the polls. 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.
The moves were hammered out beginning on Sunday in meetings at Mr. Trump’s golf club at Bedminster, N.J. Roger Ailes, the former chairman of Fox News, also met with Mr. Trump that day, as The New York Times reported on Tuesday, and he will be part of efforts to prepare Mr. Trump in his debate against Mrs. Clinton and other tasks, according to three people briefed on the discussions. “He doesn’t need any help formulating his message — his message is perfect,” the conservative author Ann Coulter said of Mr. Trump. Referring to Mr. Trump’s policy adviser, speechwriter and warm-up speaker, she added, “Maybe he could use 10 more Stephen Millers.”
Mr. Manafort had also come under increasing scrutiny over his ties to Ukraine for elections he worked on as an international consultant, including handwritten ledgers showing he was designated to receive $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from a pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012. Yet it remains to be seen whether a new chain of command can ultimately fix the problem: the candidate’s lack of discipline and desire to punch back at nearly any critic. As comfortable as Mr. Trump may feel with Mr. Bannon’s style of politics, their unconventional alliance, and the possibility that the coming weeks could resemble a conservative publicity tour more than a conventional White House run, fueled speculation that Mr. Trump was already looking past November.
After a series of recent controversies — including Mr. Trump’s assertion that Russia should hack Mrs. Clinton’s emails; his criticism of a Muslim-American Gold Star family; and his suggestion that Second Amendment supporters could revolt against Mrs. Clinton — the candidate began trying anew to appear moderated in tone. In recent months, Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have quietly explored becoming involved with a media holding, either by investing in one or by taking one over, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was briefed on those discussions.
On Monday, he delivered a speech on terrorism using a teleprompter rather than the off-the-cuff style he prefers. And on Tuesday, he offered yet another scripted address, this time on law and order. At a minimum, the campaign’s homestretch offers Mr. Trump, who has begun to limit his national media appearances to conservative outlets, an opportunity to build his audience and steer his followers toward the combative Breitbart site. Even before announcing the staff shake-up, Mr. Trump intensified his criticism of the mainstream news media in a speech on Tuesday night in which he declared that he was running against the “media-donor-political complex.”
Mr. Pence, too, has privately worked to quell the growing concerns surrounding the Republican ticket. At the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Colorado on Tuesday, Mr. Pence used his keynote speech to offer “encouragement” — a word he used several times — and reassurance to the crowd. Mr. Trump’s elevation of Mr. Bannon and Ms. Conway also highlights the growing influence of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, conservative donors from Long Island. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart, and their foundation funds a host of other conservative activist groups. They spent millions on Senator Ted Cruz’s behalf during the Republican primary, an effort Ms. Conway helped lead. And they began bankrolling a pro-Trump “super PAC” in recent weeks after becoming friendly with Mr. Trump, his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Mr. Kushner.
“We’re still winning hearts and minds every day despite an avalanche of negative media coverage,” Mr. Pence said during the closed-door session, according to audio provided to The Times. At Breitbart and its sister foundation, the Government Accountability Institute, Mr. Bannon ran a hybrid between a news organization and an opposition-research operation aimed at discrediting Mrs. Clinton. The institute sponsored a book about Mrs. Clinton’s financial entanglements, “Clinton Cash,” which spawned various articles in mainstream newspapers last year, including in The New York Times.
Time, Mr. Pence added, was on their side. “It’s preseason, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “The gun starts on Labor Day.” Rival conservative news organizations viewed Breitbart as something of an outlier, which was evident in the title of an article the Weekly Standard writer Stephen F. Hayes wrote on Wednesday: “Trump Has Decided to Live in Breitbart’s Alternative Reality.”
“It’s the merger of the Trump campaign with the kooky right,” William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, said of Mr. Bannon’s new role.
Mr. Bannon has now joined with Mr. Ailes in a common cause on Mr. Trump’s behalf, a mission that Breitbart never pretended to deny. But Mr. Ailes’s direct involvement casts a new light on how his network handled Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
In the weeks before the Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to Mr. Ailes’s forced resignation, Mr. Ailes had at least two meetings with Mr. Trump, people briefed on the sessions said.
While meetings between a presidential candidate and the chairman of an influential television network are hardly unheard-of, especially with Mr. Trump, Mr. Ailes’s direct involvement in the campaign raises new questions about whether the sessions involved more than the usual complaints about coverage.
Before Mr. Ailes’s ouster, some of the network’s most prominent journalists and contributors privately complained that Mr. Ailes was pushing them to be more supportive of Mr. Trump. This drew particular umbrage from longtime Republican staff members and contributors who either opposed Mr. Trump’s candidacy on ideological grounds or believed it demanded tough reporting on journalistic grounds.
There was, though, one prominent conservative voice unambiguously in Mr. Ailes’s corner since the beginning of the sexual harassment scandal: Breitbart.
The website emerged as a singular defender of Mr. Ailes, with a piece about a planned walkout by network stars loyal to him should he be forced out — it never came to pass — and one by Mr. Bannon ridiculing the “minor Murdochs” (the 21st Century Fox chief Rupert Murdoch’s sons and co-executives, James and Lachlan), who were seen as leading the push for Mr. Ailes to resign.