Thread: Donald Trump Plans to Adopt More-Traditional Campaign Tactics

Donald Trump Plans to Adopt More-Traditional Campaign Tactics

GOP front-runner says his campaign is evolving; coming soon are policy addresses, teleprompters and a speechwriter

By MONICA LANGLEY and
REID J. EPSTEIN
Updated April 20, 2016 9:21 p.m. ET
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Donald Trump, after notching a big win in New York, is planning to roll out significant changes in his campaign, including giving a policy speech on foreign affairs and using teleprompters and a speechwriter.

He and his newly recast team also are pledging to do more outreach to Washington Republican leaders, who have often been hostile and the target of Trump attacks, and to spend significant amounts of money to run a more conventional campaign.

Mr. Trump, in an interview, acknowledged the need for a shift. “The campaign is evolving and transitioning, and so am I,” he said. “I’ll be more effective and more disciplined.” He’s changing, he said, because “I’m not going to blow it.”


Still, Mr. Trump said he wouldn’t substantially change his personal style and populist message at his huge rallies.

“I’m still the same candidate,” he said. “Can you imagine how upset my supporters would be after waiting for hours?”

Indeed, at his first post-New York rally Wednesday in Indianapolis, Mr. Trump reverted to form, calling Sen. Ted Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary,” while taunting protesters who were being escorted out.

Though his New York win, with some 60% of the vote, cemented Mr. Trump’s position as most likely to win the GOP nomination, he continues to face the challenge of warding off rivals led by Mr. Cruz to accumulate the 1,237 delegates needed.

The goal now “is to create so much distance in the total number of votes and delegates between them that the inevitability of the Trump candidacy will be powerful,” said Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant recently brought onto the team. That could help persuade uncommitted delegates to overcome misgivings and move Mr. Trump’s way. The five primary states next Tuesday appear to be favorable terrain for him.

Donald Trump’s victory speech in New York on Tuesday night was shorter, and appeared to be more scripted than usual. Recently-hired campaign adviser Paul Manafort describes a refinement of strategy.

WSJ’s Jason Bellini reports. Photo: Matt McDonald


The evolutions in the campaign organization and style began early this month with the arrival of Mr. Manafort. He was recruited to handle delegate procurement and manage what could be a raucous convention. But after he did an audit of the unorthodox operation, his role grew to one of converting it to a more traditional campaign.

The new direction is a shift from campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s mantra “Let Trump be Trump.” Mr. Manafort’s position means that Mr. Lewandowski isn’t calling all the shots, but instead can focus on “overseeing day-to-day operations,” Mr. Lewandowski said.

The Roots of Revolt

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


An early step in the revamp will be the foreign-affairs speech, set for April 27 in Washington. One theme, Mr. Trump said, will be the relationship between economics and national security. “We’re protecting nations, and we’re not being properly compensated for that protection,” he said.
He has said that before, particularly regarding the U.S. contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the line has rattled U.S. allies in Europe. A test of the speech will be whether he can call for more burden-sharing without further unsettling allies.
Mr. Trump will deliver the speech with teleprompters, which he has often derided. This week, a pair were set up in his office, which he was using to practice. Still, he won’t use them at his rallies.

More policy speeches are in the works, with jobs a likely topic. As the campaign sets up an office in Washington, it plans to hire a speechwriter. Mr. Trump has never used one, preferring to riff at his rallies, from his hand-scrawled notes of just a few words.

Mr. Trump’s speech Tuesday night, though delivered without a teleprompter, gave a preview of the new style he plans. It lasted less than eight minutes and lacked the negative adjectives about his rivals that peppered previous victory speeches. The focus was on delivering jobs and becoming the nominee.

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Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, has found his role restricted somewhat as the campaign has brought aboard veteran political operatives such as Paul Manafort and has begun evolving toward a more traditional style. PHOTO: JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Mr. Manafort’s influence is being felt in Mr. Trump’s pocketbook. Having spent only about $40 million on the campaign over the last 10 months, mostly of his own money, the billionaire has committed to spending perhaps half that amount in the next two months, according to one person familiar with the campaign.

“I’ll spend what it takes,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump has scaled back his media appearances in recent days, and that will continue, he said. The new media strategy, said a senior adviser, is “to be less exposed and to control media impressions in order for the message to be more powerful.”

Wisconsin’s April 5 primary was the last in which Mr. Trump’s campaign was run by his seat-of-the-pants instincts. Since then, Mr. Trump hasn’t appeared on the Sunday-morning interview shows he dominated for months.

His time long was controlled by Mr. Lewandowski.

That is changing as new aides come aboard. So far, the campaign still doesn’t employ a scheduler or a pollster, though polling firms are pitching their services.

In an early meeting, Mr. Manafort, the only one in the campaign team who calls Mr. Trump by his first name, told him he needed to “win smart and with purpose.” Mr. Trump has agreed to hiring a bigger and more professional staff.

There will be a new focus on winning not just statewide vote totals but also the vote in specific congressional districts, where most delegates are awarded. In the New York primary, Mr. Manafort picked the location of each rally for its importance in delegate selection.

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Rick Wiley is among veteran political consultants recently brought onto the Donald Trump campaign team. Mr. Wiley previously led Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s short-lived campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. PHOTO: TOM WILLIAMS/ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES


Mr. Manafort is adding the type of political consultants Mr. Trump has in the past called a waste of money. Rick Wiley, who led Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s brief presidential campaign, joined the Trump team last week as political director. He is involved in trying to capture unbound delegates.

Mr. Manafort brought on Tim Clark, a longtime GOP strategist based in Sacramento, as California state director. Mr. Trump can’t reach the delegate target without a significant haul from California, where 172 are at stake on June 7.

One skeptic of the new approach is Katie Packer, leader of the Our Principles PAC, which wants the GOP to nominate someone else. She said Wednesday Mr. Trump’s assurances he can change his tone and style ring hollow. “The things that he has done and said speak to his character,” Ms. Packer said.

The campaign has healing work to do with Republican Party leaders, an effort Mr. Manafort pushed during meetings with Republican lawmakers this week. Still, Mr. Trump continues to complain the party has a “rigged” system of choosing delegates, and just this week, his campaign circulated a memo urging surrogates to attack the Republican National Committee for its rules.

Political pros aren’t the only ones who have urged Mr. Trump to shift the campaign’s approach. Son Donald Jr. said in a Tuesday interview that just as the family business adapts to “market conditions,” the campaign needed to adjust to “political realities” and prepare for a general election.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-t...-it-1461200705

Donald Trump says transgender people should use bathroom of their choice

Donald Trump and his aides admit that it’s all an act

By Paul Waldman April 22 at 8:57 AM

Listen to Trump's top strategist's closed-door meeting with RNC members
Play Video33:22

Republican front-runner Donald Trump's chief strategist Paul Manafort spoke to members of the Republican National Committee in Hollywood, Fla., at a closed-door briefing on April 21. The Washington Post obtained an audio recording of the meeting. (TWP)

With the nomination in sight, the transformation of Donald Trump is underway. That brash, bigoted, bullying loudmouth mounting a string of rallies masquerading as a presidential campaign? He’s on his way out. Experienced political professionals have taken over, and the New Donald is on his way, just a regular politician like all the others. Philip Rucker, Dan Balz and Robert Costa report:

The two new leaders of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign sought Thursday to reassure nervous Republican Party leaders that there is a path to victory in November and that the divisive billionaire mogul will be able to transform his image to win over the general electorate.Trump’s chief strategist Paul Manafort told members of the Republican National Committee in a closed-door briefing here Thursday afternoon that his candidate has been playing a “part” on the campaign trail, but is starting to pivot toward presenting a more businesslike and presidential “persona.”“He gets it,” Manafort told RNC members. “The part that he’s been playing is now evolving into the part that you’ve been expecting. The negatives will come down, the image is going to change, but ‘Crooked Hillary’ is still going to be ‘Crooked Hillary.’” …Manafort argued that Clinton’s negative favorability ratings are caused by “character” issues, whereas Trump’s are fueled by “personality” concerns.“Fixing personality negatives is a lot easier than fixing character negatives,” Manafort said. “You can’t change somebody’s character, but you can change the way a person presents himself.”

I think Manafort is getting a little too cute with that distinction — Trump has an awful lot of character negatives — but the frankness on display here is stunning. It isn’t the first time we’ve heard something like this — Trump himself has said, “I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to.” But when was the last time you heard a candidate’s top aide say in public that he’s been “playing a part,” and now he’ll just be playing a new part?

If you listen to Trump’s supporters, one of the things they cite for their attraction to him is that unlike every other politician, he’s authentic. He “tells it like it is,” they say again and again. He’s not like those candidates whose every word is crafted and rehearsed. He’s real.

And yet the truth is that Trump is the most inauthentic candidate there is. He has spent decades manipulating the press to advance his business interests and is obsessed with his public image to an almost psychotic degree. To take just one colorful example, for years, reporters would get phone calls from a Trump associate named John Barron, who was often quoted defending Trump’s wisdom and extolling his achievements. But “John Barron” didn’t exist — it was Trump himself making the calls. Perhaps it was inevitable that he would become a star of reality TV, an entertainment genre built on presenting artfully crafted and edited presentations as “reality.”If Trump was an ordinary candidate, he would get positively savaged for the kind of shameless reinvention he and his aides are promising. Let’s remember that for a couple of decades now, the political press has been obsessed with the idea of authenticity. I’ve long argued that what it really values is not so much authenticity itself but the most convincing portrayal of the authentic; while every politician presents a persona to the public, the ones rewarded for being “real” are simply the better actors. Candidates such as Mitt Romney or Al Gore, on the other hand, both of whom were uncomfortable enough with the performative aspects of politics to make it evident to all that they were indeed acting, get skewered by reporters for their inadequate performance.Just try to imagine for a moment what the reaction in the media would be if Hillary Clinton — another politician who is constantly criticized for being insufficiently “real” — had her campaign manager say in public that she would be transforming her personality for the general election, because it’s all an act anyway. Would the reaction be, “Well, this is interesting”? Of course not. She’d be eviscerated by every reporter and pundit in the land.

Yet the rules seem different for Trump. Maybe it’s because he was a celebrity before coming to politics, so reporters don’t expect anything different from him than an entertaining show; they’ll criticize him for his indifference to policy details, but not for the inherent fakery of his campaign. Whatever it is, Trump can get credit from his supporters for being authentic and at the same time be as blatantly inauthentic as he wants.

So what does a Donald Trump who tries to be a serious candidate look like? It’s hard to imagine.

What we know at this point is that Trump will be the most ignorant, unqualified major-party nominee in modern times, if not all of American history. He’s trying to be the first president who never worked a day in government, and over the course of the campaign it has become clear that he knows and cares as much about public policy as your average sixth-grader. The magic of his primary campaign, however, is that the force of his personality and the emotions he channels have been powerful enough that it didn’t matter.

The people supporting Trump don’t want someone who’s qualified in any traditional sense. They want someone who’s angry, who’ll stick it to the people they hate, who’ll talk like the Shock Jock in Chief and say the things they say in private and wish they could say in public.

So now Trump is saying to them that he isn’t going to be that person anymore. He’s going to act more “presidential,” a word he uses frequently but seems to think resides solely in not swearing in public, or maybe talking less about whom he’d like to punch in the face. I suppose the idea is that the Republican voters who back him precisely because of those features of his personality that the rest of the country finds repugnant won’t forget why they were attracted to him in the first place, while the rest of the electorate will give him a clean slate.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll work. But it would be a pretty sad commentary on the American people’s judgment if it did.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...mepage%2Fstory

Do these stupid writers for the Wall Street Journal really think that once Donald Trump is President he would still refer to the people he criticizes and calls names in a political campaign? Is this their first experience with a political campaign? They're sure acting like it. Why don't they go to all the people Trump has knocked off the debate stage and all the media personalities who have called Trump names and ask them if they plan to still call Trump those names and still refer to him the way they did in a political campaign?

They're so stupid.