Trump ready to run 'different kind of campaign,' may have cabinet picks by convention

Trump ready to run 'different kind of campaign,' may have cabinet picks by GOP convention

Published June 21, 2016 FoxNews.com

Donald Trump said Monday night he's ready to run "a different kind of campaign" while explaining his decision to fire campaign manager Corey Lewandowski earlier in the day.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly in an interview on "The O'Reilly Factor" that Lewandowski was "a good man" who helped him run a "small, beautiful, well-unified campaign" during the primary season.

"We're going to go a different route," Trump said.

He added that he plans to ramp up campaign operations heading into the general election phase of the campaign, and that he may even have some cabinet picks in place before the Republican National Convention in July.

"We have tremendous people, we have tremendous talent," he said.

Trump told O'Reilly that he would not announce his vice presidential pick before the convention in Cleveland, but was looking for someone with "great judgement" and "in the world of politics" to balance out his experience in the business world.

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When asked by O'Reilly if he would support restricting guns based on size and the amount of rounds they fire in the wake of the Orlando terror attack, Trump said the "big guns" are the kind used by "the enemy."

"I wouldn't because it's a question of protection," Trump said. "Once you start, where do you end?"

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His appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" came after a day when his campaign manager was fired amid an internal campaign power struggle with Paul Manafort, the veteran operative who since March has been amassing influence inside Trump HQ, a campaign source told Fox News.

Manafort recently telegraphed through third parties he would be gone in 48 hours if Trump didn’t oust Lewandowski, who'd run his campaign from the outset. Manafort was fed up with battling Lewandowski and let the campaign know the two of them "just couldn't get along."

From there, it became a family affair. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner didn’t want to lose Manafort, believing him to be the more experienced hand to guide the campaign into the general election. They convinced Trump to keep him – and the only way to do that, given Manafort’s terms, was to dump Lewandowski, the source said.

Despite the shock of Trump parting ways with Lewandowski, one of his closest and most loyal advisers, just weeks before the convention, in some corners the decision was not so surprising.

The former conservative activist played a central role in daily operations, fundraising, and Trump's search for a running mate, but Lewandowski's aggressive approach also fueled near-constant campaign infighting that complicated Trump's shift toward the general election.

Another Trump campaign official, Michael Caputo, resigned Monday afternoon over a tweet he sent out earlier in the day about Lewandowski's firing, a campaign source told Fox News.
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https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...do9_normal.jpgMichael Caputo @MichaelRCaputo

Ding dong the witch is dead! http://youtu.be/rHJoj9IqeKg
6:49 AM - 20 Jun 2016

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Caputo tweeted "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" shortly after news about Lewandowski broke. Accompanying the tweet was a photo from the

"Wizard of Oz," showing the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East protruding from under a house.

Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed Caputo is no longer with the campaign.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren in an "On The Record" interview Monday night he thought the firing of Lewandowski was a "new direction" for the Trump campaign.

"I see a pivot and seriousness to the general election," he said.

Fox News’ John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016...l?intcmp=hpbt1

TIn my opinion, no candidate should announce their Cabinet picks before the General Election. It just gives the media a feeding frenzy when they don't like your picks, and they won't.

The voters have a right to know what people are going to be advising the person they may or may not vote for.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

The voters have a right to know what people are going to be advising the person they may or may not vote for.

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Well that would be a first. No candidate has ever released their cabinet members before the election that I've ever heard of. Who are Hillary's cabinet members? Who were Romney's? Who were McCains?

Don't do it, Trump. Don't fall for this crap.

OCT. 30 2000 3:38 PM

Can a Presidential Candidate Announce His Cabinet Choices?

Over the weekend on Inside

Washington Jack Germond said that while George W. Bush was making it clear he wants Colin Powell to be his secretary of state, Bush was precluded by law from announcing his selection. Is there a law against a candidate saying who would be in his Cabinet?

No. For one thing, it would be a violation of free speech. But to announce such choices is riskily presumptuous. No one wants to fall victim to "Thomas E. Dewey Syndrome."

So confident was Dewey that he would beat Harry Truman in 1948, that his staff started calling him Mr. President, and he began working on his Cabinet choices before the election. Since Dewey didn't become president, he didn't get to appoint John Foster Dulles secretary of state. Dulles had to wait until Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952 (Eisenhower didn't announce the choice in advance) in order to fill the post. W.'s father also knew whom he would be appointing as secretary of state, but George H.W. Bush waited until the morning after the election to say it was James Baker.


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...t_choices.html

Like I said, Trump, don't do it. Your whole campaign will be dragged down into the gutter by whatever their dirt is, and they all have it, everyone does. Wait until after the election to announce your cabinet. Not even hints or clues. And who you might think is good today may not be good by next January.

Why Trump and Clinton should name their entire Cabinets right now

Ted Cruz was right to pick a veep. He — and the rest of the candidates — should have gone even further.

By Raymond A. Smith May 3

Now that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has announced Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential pick — an unusual move for a presidential candidate trailing in the polls and weeks out from his party’s convention — speculation will inevitably follow about who front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump might select as running mates. Not only should they follow Cruz’s lead, they should go a step further and, well before Election Day, publicly name the individuals they’d appoint as Cabinet members.

That Cruz’s approach isn’t already the norm is a weakness in the way we choose our chief executive.

The American public deserves to have at least a sense, before ballots are cast, of those who would hold the most powerful positions within the next administration.

This is particularly true for the departments of State, Treasury, Defense and Justice, whose leaders are invested with authority over many of the core activities of the country — everything from negotiating treaties to overseeing federal criminal investigations at the highest level.

But not just the big four: the secretary of Health and Human Services oversees the single-largest slice of total federal spending; and the need for a competent and experienced secretary of Homeland Security is self-evident in an era when border security and the threat of terrorism weigh on citizens’ minds.

Even the seemingly smaller Cabinet portfolios can wield influence over major areas of public policy, including Energy, Transportation and Labor. And all Cabinet members, by statute, are in the line of succession to the presidency.

So why aren’t Cabinet picks announced beforehand? Some explanations make more sense than others.

One potential argument is that the official transition period before Inauguration Day is needed to sort out the complexities of staffing the sprawling federal government. The transition is, as Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service recently noted, “the most important takeover of any organization in history.” But while several weeks may indeed be required to fill the range of executive-branch appointments, senior-most officials could be named much earlier. Identifying Cabinet secretaries earlier would enable them to be more actively involved in the broader staffing of their departments, thereby easing the transition period.

Other considerations would be more overtly political. The prospect of a plum role in the next administration surely motivates potential officeholders to devote their energy and enthusiasm to presidential candidates and their parties, and doling out the spoils of victory too early could blunt the support of campaign surrogates who wind up being passed over for top jobs.

Naming the Cabinet earlier would also complicate the respective candidates’ narrative and message. Think Sarah Palin, and you don’t have to imagine the jolt that certain vice presidential selections can cause. Then extend that to a list of a dozen or so names. Every gaffe by a prospective secretary could generate distracting campaign-trail headlines.

Still, some names would boost the front-runners — Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, perhaps, as treasury secretary in a Clinton administration. And while part of Trump’s appeal is his outsider status, naming his Cabinet in advance could offer reassurance to less committed voters that he would enlist the expertise of seasoned policy hands with deeper knowledge of the issues than his.

If named before Election Day, Cabinet designees could fan out across nation on the campaign trail, and thereby become better known to the American people.

Cabinet members named before the election would also benefit from enhanced legitimacy and authority once in office.

After all, if voters select their candidate based, in part, on the teams they choose, the team members indirectly gain the voters’ stamp of approval. This ratification would enable members of the next Cabinet to build more explicitly on the electoral mandate of the incoming administration.

Once in office, a stronger Cabinet would also improve governance. As I outlined four years ago, “the job of the presidency has grown so large, so overwhelming in its power and responsibility, that no one human being can excel in all its many dimensions, from the ceremonial to the political, from making policy to managing a vast bureaucracy. In an atmosphere of bitter partisan division and a 24-hour news environment, presidents more than ever need help at the highest levels possible.” An empowered Cabinet is uniquely positioned to provide such help.

In parliamentary democracies, such as Great Britain, it is the norm for most members of an incoming Cabinet to be known to voters well before an election. Part of this is structural, since parliamentary systems are set up to include a “shadow cabinet” composed of the opposition party’s members of parliament, mirroring members of the party in power at each ministerial-level position. In these systems, of course, the prime minister retains post-election flexibility to assemble an executive team that best reflects his or her electoral mandate.

Comparatively, though, citizens in many democracies go to the polls with more specifics about who will run their next government than Americans do.

We certainly don’t need to adopt a parliamentary system to adopt one of its most logical features.

In this messy political year, it might be too much to expect nominees to announce comprehensive lists of names in advance of their party conventions. On the other hand, should a contested nominating convention take place, delegates voting on second and third ballots might find this information useful. At a minimum, before November, the nominees should provide voters with a better picture of the type of people they would entrust to run the federal government.

Clinton once wrote “it takes a village” to bring up a child. So, too, it takes an entire executive team to successfully govern a fractious and complex nation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...ets-right-now/

The Cabinet is not an election issue. These are appointed positions, named after the election of a President.