Trump’s secret plan to quash a ‘Dump Trump’ convention plot
The presumptive GOP nominee is building a massive whip team in preparation for a possible floor fight.
In a Tuesday night conference call led partly by Trump’s top adviser Paul Manafort and including 200 staffers and volunteers, Trump’s senior convention aides sketched out a whip operation led by a half-dozen operatives with deep convention experience. The effort will rely on a team of 150 volunteers and paid staff to keep the convention’s 2,472 delegates in line, and it will utilize a database with information on many of the delegates.
.. The team will be overseen primarily by Doug Davenport, a former lobbying associate of Manafort, who was brought on board by the Trump campaign in April to court supportive delegates.
.. Trump campaign attorney Bill McGinley, who was counsel to the 2012 convention’s rules committee, will handle all of the campaign’s legal operations at the convention.
.. Anti-Trump delegates, meanwhile, have yet to compile even a complete roster of members of the convention Rules Committee, let alone the entire attendance list.
.. Davenport and Manafort did not respond to requests for comment. But the offer to pay for travel and accommodations for members of the whip team, many of whom are not campaign staffers, is notable, given the dire financial straits facing the campaign. It seems to suggest that Trump’s team is leaving nothing to chance when it comes to securing the nomination.