Trump’s New Campaign Manager Will Let Trump Be Trump
Trump’s New Campaign Manager Will Let Trump Be Trump
Being down in the polls, Kellyanne Conway says, ‘lights a fire.’
By Gabrielle Levy | Political Reporter Aug. 18, 2016, at 10:44 a.m.
Fresh off her first day as Donald Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway charted an optimistic path to turning around Trump's struggling operation by letting the candidate be himself.
In an expansive interview with CNN's "New Day" on Thursday, Conway, a veteran GOP pollster, said that despite the difficult month since Trump formally accepted the nomination, "we like our odds."
"I think it helps us to be a little bit behind, and we are," she said, acknowledging poll numbers that put Trump an average of 7 points behind Democrat Hillary Clinton. "It lights a fire under us and reminds us what we need to do to get this done."
"They're basically saying, I don't like the way the last couple weeks went and I want you to get back to fighting Hillary Clinton," she said of polls showing Republicans moving away from their nominee.
Since Trump essentially locked up the nomination this spring, Republican elites have pushed him to pivot to the general election and to adopt a softer, more focused style.
Trump has resisted such a shift, setting off a cycle in which he would deliver a restrained policy speech off a teleprompter before unleashing an off-message and often outrageous comment during extemporaneous remarks at rallies that would earn days of near-blanket negative coverage for his campaign.
This week's changing of leadership in his campaign, bringing on Conway and Breitbart News boss Steve Bannon as his new campaign chief executive while sidelining chairman Paul Manafort, seems to signal those arguing for a pivot had lost.
"We're going to make sure Donald Trump is comfortable about being in his own skin, that he doesn't lose that authenticity that you simply can't buy and a pollster can't give you," Conway said. "Voters know if you're comfortable in your own skin."
"What I would like him to do is let everyone get the benefit of his leadership. He scores very well in strong leader, and that's what so many Americans are starving for," Conway told CNN's Alisyn Camerota. "When people talk about a pivot, Alisyn, most of the advice he receives, whether it's on TV or in person, is pivoting stylistically. But substantively, the issues, that benefits Donald Trump."
Despite Trump's low favorability numbers, what helps, Conway said, is that Clinton is nearly as disliked.
Her "fundamentals are still poor," Conway said. "It's not as if a majority of Americans now say I like her or I much trust her. She has a terrible gender gap among men, basically half of the electorate, that has not been able to be turned around. And I don't know she has many places to go. In other words, she's a very defined individual."
The strategy, Conway explained, was to focus on the kind of "uplifting, generational, inspirational" message she said Clinton was ignoring. She said next week would focus on immigration and the week after education.
"For whatever reason, because she's certainly surrounded by many talented professionals and smart people, for whatever reason, they're running a campaign about Donald Trump and not about Hillary Clinton's vision," she said. "We're the ones giving these policy speeches. … We're the ones who have the issues set in our favor because at the end of the day, this is 2000. This is 2008 all over again. It's a change election. It's 1992."
But it was also key not to try to box Trump in, she said.
"If he wants to deliver the speech, if he wants to go to a rally, if he wants to connect with the crowd in a way that's very spontaneous, that's wonderful," she said. "That's how he got here. That's how he became the nominee in large part."
"Mr. Trump is finding joy in the campaign trail, which is very important," she said. "You want a candidate who is having fun because the people show up at his rallies or speeches, they're there to connect. They're there because, I think, typical politicians like Hillary Clinton erect campaigns, but Donald Trump has built a movement, and people feel included in that movement."
And if the strategy is to let Trump be Trump, it helps Bannon, who Conway called a "brilliant tactician" similar to the candidate.
"He has a long history of, I think, being unafraid," Conway said. "I'll tell you what Donald Trump needs. He needs people who are like him in this sense: You have to be unapologetically, unflinchingly unafraid of Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and all that Clinton campaign means. Because we feel like we're up against a major machine here."
Her own job, then, is to be willing to tell the candidate the hard truths.
"I can be the skunk at the garden party plenty. Ask [vice presidential nominee] Mike Pence. I've been his pollster for many years," Conway said. "I give it to them straight."
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...trump-be-trump
