According to The New York Times, ex-Fox News CEO Roger Ailes helped oust Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and advised Trump on advertising.
You may recall that when The Times reported earlier this week that the disgraced Ailes is helping Trump prepare for the presidential debates, the Trump campaign denied it.
But according to a Times article yesterday, Ailes was very instrumental in the latest Trump campaign shakeup that included the firing of campaign manager Paul Manafort:
It was an article in The New York Times last weekend — about frequent but frustrated efforts by Mr. Trump’s top advisers to curtail his pugilistic instincts — that set off the series of events leading to Mr. Manafort’s departure.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump raged at Mr. Manafort, holding him responsible for the article, according to people familiar with the episode. On Sunday, Mr. Trump hastily convened a meeting of paid and unpaid advisers including the pollster Kellyanne Conway; Roger Ailes, the ousted Fox News chairman; and Stephen K. Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, a conservative website. Mr. Manafort was present for part of the meeting.
Mr. Ailes urged Mr. Trump to reconfigure the campaign’s leadership, according to a Republican briefed on the meeting. A former Republican strategist and ad man who was friends with Mr. Trump long before his ouster, Mr. Ailes had reviewed some of the initial television commercials Mr. Manafort had overseen and told Mr. Trump in blunt terms that they were lackluster. (my emphases)
On Tuesday, Bannon and Conway took over the management of the campaign.
I don’t know if these changes will be enough to save Trump’s flailing campaign but it’s a safe bet that, even with Ailes officially gone, Fox News will coordinate its messaging with the campaign. And that the campaign will get very, very nasty.
Crossposted at Newshounds.us
