Trump Makes Big Move to Right Ship

Happy work week, Friends,

Donald Trump learned from this blog five days ago that he had about a week to turn his flagging campaign around or face being ostracized by his own party.

This morning, we awoke to YUGE news. Corey Lewandowski, the man who steered the Trump campaign through the primaries and to the defeat of 16 opponents, got canned.

Don't you just hate it when you wake up in the morning, flick on the tube, and find
out you're out of work? Yeah, me too. 

Lewandowski was the 'genius' behind Trump's rough and tumble in-your-face campaigning style, and it worked well while he was destroying his fellow Republicans.

Once Nubbs became the presumptive nominee, it was quickly clear that Lewandowski's tactics were a general-election liability. Now, everything Trump did was under a microscope and was being parsed and picked apart. It all hurt.

Being combative and nasty was not drawing necessary new support. Additionally, Nubb's talent for eating his own foot was choking him.

A couple of months ago, Trump took a big step toward bringing his campaign into the mainstream by hiring longtime lobbyist and political operative Paul Manafort as a co-equal to Lewandowski. This was supposed to mollify the GOP establishment.

But until this morning, Manafort's influence had been all but absent. Lewandowski still seemed to be calling the shots, and Trump's poll numbers were heading steadily south.

Today's move is a signal from the Trump campaign to the GOP leadership that he's ready to take their advice. And he plans to transition his campaign to a place that he claims will bore us to tears.

Manafort has apparently convinced The Donald that the party and country need some boredom.

This is the kind of maneuver I expected, and now we'll see if Donald Trump can compete as a genuine candidate with real ideas, policies, and vision.

Since snatching the presumptive nomination in early May, we've seen that Nubbs has been a virtual empty $5,000 suit.

But during the primaries, he did prove could be an exceptionally quick study. Firing his campaign manager was Trump's message to his detractors that he hasn't stopped learning.

I give The Donald credit for at least paying attention and doing what he needed to do to right his campaign.

Now we'll see if there are two genuine mainstream party candidates in this presidential race, or if Trump will continue to be a Colbert-like parody.

I hope he shows us something new. He just bought himself another week.