| | | | 'An exciting day for Team Trump' | | That was campaign chairman Paul Manafort's extremely upbeat description Wednesday in a memo to staffers. After nearly four tumultuous post-convention weeks, Donald Trump revealed that he would be pivoting toward new leadership.
Let's break it down:
IN: Steve Bannon -- the Breitbart News executive chairman will join the campaign as its chief executive. More on him in a second, but if you know anything about Breitbart, you know what the move means: This campaign could become even more bare-knuckled and bruising.
UP: Kellyanne Conway -- The campaign's senior adviser and pollster just became its manager. CNN's Tal Kopan checks in with all you need to know about the conservative commentator and erstwhile Ted Cruz super PAC leader.
DOWN: Manafort -- He won an internal power struggle with former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in June, but clearly loses ground here. Per his own memo, Manafort will keep his titles (campaign chairman and chief strategist) but his influence is clearly diminished. | | Bannon is "a bit of a street fighter," according to former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who gave his thoughts this morning on CNN's "New Day." In a long, must-read profile published in October 2015, Bloomberg's Joshua Green describes Bannon as something like a right-wing Zelig, repeatedly popping up at key moments and alongside big players in the Breitbart-backed, Drudge-adjacent conservative movement.
Good nugget: Bannon explained his editorial ethos to Green this way: "We're honey badgers. We don't give a s---." (Note: How long before the honey badger meme gets a Trump spin?)
From CNN's Brian Stelter: "Trump's hiring of Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon is a signal that nothing is off-limits between now and November 8." | | Programming note! Greens in the limelight | | Take some time off from the latest Trump commotion for a look at the Green Party's presidential nominee, Jill Stein, and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, as they try to keep the "political revolution" alive tonight during a live town hall event on CNN at 9 p.m. ET.
Chris Cuomo hosts the third-party hopefuls, who will need to get their national polling average up a bit to make the debate stages this fall. (They need at least 15% in national polls, and they currently hover around 5%.) CNN's Eli Watkins has a look at one of the questions dogging Stein, a retired physician. | | What the 'alt-right' is saying ... | | As Bannon gets to managing Team Trump, The Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff and Gideon Resnick report that Trump's "white nationalist fanboys" are very pleased.
"Breitbart [has] emerged as a nationalist site and done great stuff on immigration in particular," the editor VDARE.com, a white supremacist site, told Woodruff and Resnick, calling the hire "great news."
If you're not familiar with the emerging "alt-right" movement, Vox's Dylan Matthews published this explainer in April. | | Take a ride down recent memory lane, from convention bounce to campaign overhaul, and behold the almost impossibly busy -- and messy -- 27 days that came to a head with today's management shuffle.
Bottom line: Any momentum out of Cleveland was quickly blunted and turned back on the candidate by a prolonged series of controversies pitting Trump against a wide range of opponents, including:
The parents of a slain Muslim-American war hero;
The most powerful elected official in Republican politics;
A crying baby;
People who think he incited violence against Hillary Clinton;
People who don't believe President Barack Obama is "the founder of ISIS";
And the "very dishonest and totally biased media." | | | ... and help Buzzfeed help Twitter address its problem with abusive tweeters. Last week, Charlie Warzel published a deep dive into the service's long history of failing to deal with trolls and harassment. Today, he cooked up this quick survey "intended to inform our understanding of how Twitter deals with abuse reports." | | "One on One" with Hillary Clinton | | | Paul McCartney met with Clinton today as their paths crossed in Cleveland. He is in town as part of his "One on One" tour and the Democratic nominee is campaigning in Ohio. CNN's Dan Merica was there -- well, in the zip code -- when it happened. Please, please him by reading this story. | | | CNN senior political contributor David Axelrod wants to know if ousted former Fox News chief Roger Ailes can tame Trump ... the Clinton Foundation's ties to the Clinton State Department are again raising eyebrows, turning heads, and surfacing new questions ... and for D.C. tourists, a note: the Washington Monument, closed today, will not be opening tomorrow. (Here's why.) | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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