For the Hillary Clinton campaign, Donald Trump’s most recent campaign shake-up only backed up what they’ve been telling Republicans: with Trump, what you see is what you get.
“What’s become clear that no matter how much the establishment wants to clean Donald Trump up, get him on a teleprompter and get him on message, he has officially won the fight to let Trump be Trump,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters on a press call Wednesday. “He keeps telling us who he is, it is time we believe him.”
Hours earlier, the Trump campaign announced that it was bringing on Steve Bannon — the chairman of the hard-right news website Breitbart — as its CEO and GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway as its campaign manager. Brietbart is one of Trump’s top supporters in the media — willing to cheer on his Muslim ban, his attacks against the Kahn family and his racially-tinged smears of a federal judge — and the move was taken as a signal that Trump would be resisting any efforts to tone down his bombastic style.
“It’s absolutely clear that, after a long struggle within his campaign organization, Trump has prevailed,” Mook said. “He’s said very clearly that he wants to be himself, he wants to say whatever is on his mind and the things that he believes, and he is going to do that. That’s how we should expect him to finish the campaign and he certainly has assembled now a new group of people around him who will support and enable that.”
The news of the new additions to the Trump team sent shockwaves through political media. But Mook said, “It’s unfortunately not surprising to see this happen, coming from Trump.”
“After weeks of stories about his need to pivot to a more serious campaign, it’s clear that his divisive, erratic and dangerous rhetoric simply represents who he is,” Mook said. “He has decided to double down on his most divisive, hateful erratic statements and behavior.”
The Clinton campaign has touted the the endorsements of prominent Republicans and former GOP officials. Mook said that “it’s up to Republican party to decide what they want to do” when it comes to disavowing Trump. But holding GOP candidates “accountable” for not rejecting Trump is fair game, Mook said.
“Voters have every right to ask why any candidate would not stand up to Trump and not reject what he’s offering, particularly now that he has made so cleared last night and this morning that he believes this is the direction he needs to go and the direction he would take our party,” Mook said.
