Trump Dump!

The Trump campaign had some shake ups this week, Paul Manafort either resigned or was fired, depending on who you ask, as more information keeps coming out about his possible support of pro-Russian parties in Ukraine, including organizing a protest in which American soldiers got rocks thrown at them, also supporting the annexation of Crimea, which you would think is more important, but you know "ARE TROOPS".

Resignation was a good move, and the timing worked okay, any smart political operative would have seen this coming after the first article last Sunday, but reacting too fast would have made it seem worse, giving brief denials or no comment and waiting a few days to quit gives the illusion of maturity and wisdom. And was the best way to avoid further damage to the Trump campaign as well.

Now don't get me wrong, this still hurts the Trump campaign, I mean, the FBI is investigating his campaign managers company, doesn't matter if he quit, it still hurts, but as far as what little damage control was possible on the issue, this was probably the smartest play for all involved.

A surprisingly competent move from a campaign that has shown no sign of competence up until now is suspicious to me, Manafort is an experienced political operator so it coulda been all his decision, but this whole ordeal has been so filled with personality conflicts and ineptitude it could have been entirely a coincidence, Trump brought in a couple other folks to help with the campaign, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.

If you think one of those names is familiar, it is probably Bannon, who is/was the Executive chairman of Breitbart News, the hard right and incredibly racist news site that somehow people seem to take seriously anyway. The site has long been one of the more... coherent mouthpieces supporting Trump, even if it is dumb as hell. Conway is a pollster, she worked for Ted Cruz earlier this season, and her company's client list is basically a comprehensive list of who's who in the conservative world.

Interestingly, neither of these two have actually run a campaign before, though I suppose that probably surprises no one.

Many (stupid) commentators are saying that this is the start of the mythical "pivot" the moment when Trump stops appealing to the base and attempts to convince the rest of the world to vote for him, as I mentioned, those people are stupid. Manafort spent basically his entire time as campaign manager trying to get Trump to pivot, and the result was a few truly abysmal attempts at teleprompter aided speeches followed by incredible amounts of backlash once Trump took to Twitter or interviews to spout his bullshit unfiltered. Trump has been unhappy with not being allowed to be himself and there are good odds that Manafort leaving is just a coincidence and Trump forced him out now that he has Bannon and Conway instead. Who can be counted upon to not tell Trump to tone things down. Knowing Bannon and the site he comes from, probably quite the opposite.

After a couple days of pretty ho-hum, but not damaging speeches, Trump today decided to cut loose a bit and spoke on African American issues, describing the inner cities as "in ruins" and the black community as universally poor and uneducated, he did this of course, in a Michigan community that is 93% white.

Personally I think Trump keeps it under control until next week, if control is the right word anyway, today's speech surely doesn't help him with the minority community, any of them, but to be honest it wasn't for them anyway, it does do a great job of perpetuating stereotypes and if there was an intended point, it was to appeal to his base without just telling them "yes I agree that your prejudices are valid". But anyway, it's hard to walk the tightrope between dogwhistle and outright racism, and Trump is particularly bad at it, by this time next week we might be talking about how he reeled off a whole list of racial slurs, or punched a nun, or something else equally crazy.