Donald J. Trump may be the first to run because he sees a presidential campaign as the best way to attract attention to himself. There seems to be no other driving passion in him, certainly not the passion to govern.
.. The shift is from politics to grabbing attention, and, quite possibly, from winning the election to winning the defeat, which is how he has spent practically his entire career.
.. Mr. Trump is no fool. He couldn’t possibly have thought that insulting the Khans, who had lost a son in combat, or dithering over whether to support the speaker of the House, Paul D. Ryan, or disingenuously hinting that the only way to stop Hillary Clinton was to shoot her, would have boosted his prospects for winning. They only boosted the attention paid to him.
.. It was a decision designed to make sure he continues to be an attentionmonger rather than another pol. Mr. Bannon, a provocateur at Breitbart, has never run a campaign, but he knows a lot about how to get media attention.
.. Sarah Ellison of Vanity Fair and Brian Stelter of CNN have speculated that Mr. Trump may want to use his new notoriety to build a media empire. His alliance with Mr. Bannon may help him do that. So may his reported linkup with Roger Ailes for campaign advice.
Trump predicts he can win 95 percent of the black vote
Donald Trump promised Friday night that if elected president, he will win 95 percent of the African-American vote in his reelection bid.
.. “Trump going into inner-city Philadelphia and offering a better future could have an amazing result. Because the truth is, no Republican has ever had the courage” to offer African Americans a compelling reason to vote for the GOP, Gingrich said.
.. “We have a divided country. It’s totally divided. The era of division will be replaced with a future of unity, total unity. We will love each other. We will have one country. Everybody will work together,” Trump said. “In my administration, every American will be treated equally, protected equally and honored equally. We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms and seek a new future built on our common culture and values as one American people.”
GOP insiders: Trump’s overhaul won’t succeed
Fewer than a third of Republican members of The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 key battleground states — believe Trump’s reshuffling will move the campaign in the right direction. Just as many, 31 percent, say the installation of Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO and pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, represent a turn for the worse.
.. “Changes in top staff this late in the game are always a sign that the campaign and candidate recognize that they are lost. In this case, they have gone from bad to worse. Campaigns do not need ‘CEOs,’ and pollsters are not qualified to manage presidential efforts. He is in a constant cycle of moving from one set of ‘yes men’ to another.”
.. A North Carolina Republican called Bannon “a bomb-thrower” but with “good aim.”
.. “Paul Manafort was trying to run a conventional campaign with an unconventional candidate,” said an Ohio Republican.
Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After Tumultuous Run
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. Those news reports were blotting out much of the press coverage of the candidate this week. And they contributed to Mr. Manafort becoming viewed with trepidation by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a major force within the campaign
.. When he joined the campaign, he was seen as a peer to Mr. Trump, 70, and someone whose advice Mr. Trump might heed. In fact, Mr. Manafort had pushed for the selection of Mike Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, as Mr. Trump’s running mate.
.. Aides have tried a range of efforts to reign in his impulses, including adding different travel companions.
.. After he was hired by Mr. Trump, Mr. Manafort helped quash uprisings among Republican delegates that, even if they wouldn’t imperil Mr. Trump’s ability to get the nomination, would have been an embarrassing distraction at the convention.