Buttons for sale for US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are seen outside his rally at the Summit Sports and Ice Complex on August 19, 2016 in Diamondale, Mich.JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP / Getty Images
With the departure of the second senior campaign official in as many months, Donald Trump's bid for president is heading further into uncharted territory.
On Friday, Mr. Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned after two new advisers joined the Republican's inner circle in leadership roles earlier in the week. In June, Mr. Trump's prior campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was pushed out after a power struggle with Mr. Manafort.
The repeated exits of top personnel are unusual for any presidential campaign and especially so close to November's general election. The moves speak to a campaign and candidate that are struggling to find a steady rhythm, let alone a path to victory, with little time left to reset.
The campaign's overall strategy and operations are now firmly under the sway of Stephen Bannon, a right-wing media executive, and Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster. The two joined Mr. Trump's team earlier this week as he searches for a way to recover from a disastrous stretch that has left him trailing his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, both in national polls and surveys of critical swing states.
Unlike Mr. Manafort, neither Mr. Bannon nor Ms. Conway has experience running the machinery of a national campaign. For months, according to reports, Mr. Manafort had attempted – unsuccessfully – to rein in Mr. Trump's predilection for combative and polarizing rhetoric.
By contrast, Mr. Bannon, now the campaign's chief executive, has no such qualms about Mr. Trump's style. Until recently, he ran Breitbart News, an ultra-conservative and nationalist website known for its blistering attacks aimed not just at Democrats, but sometimes also at Republicans.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has lurched from controversy to controversy with barely any pause between missteps. He encouraged Russia to hack into Ms. Clinton's e-mail, criticized the parents of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and made a reference to gun-rights activists that some interpreted as an invitation to violence.
Voters, including some Republicans, were repulsed. At the end of July, Mr. Trump briefly had a 50-per-cent chance of winning the election, according to the website FiveThirtyEight, which produces an election model based on aggregating polls. By Aug. 19, his chance of victory had plummeted to 14 per cent. Republicans are increasingly alarmed that Mr. Trump will imperil the party's ability to hold onto seats in Congress.
Mr. Trump's new team has the task of reversing his slide in the polls. In recent days, Mr. Trump has delivered two speeches using a Teleprompter, a device he has disdained. At a rally on Thursday night in North Carolina, he read from a prepared text and expressed regret for past words which "may have caused personal pain." He did not say which remarks he considered regrettable (the long list of individuals insulted by Mr. Trump includes U.S. Senator John McCain, federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, and Ghazala Khan, the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier).
On Friday, Mr. Trump's campaign unveiled a national television advertisement – its first of the general election – that presented a dystopian view of Ms. Clinton as president. In such an America, "the system stays rigged against Americans, Syrian refugees flood in," the narrator intones, over a darkened image of people massed near a barrier. In Donald Trump's America, "the border [is] secure, our families safe."
While such misleading rhetoric may ring true for Mr. Trump's existing supporters, it's hard to see how it broadens his appeal. "They're trying to shore up their base with 80 days to go," said William Cunningham, a veteran political strategist and former senior adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Mr. Cunningham said the shakeup at Mr. Trump's campaign comes later than any other he can recall in a presidential race. Normally campaigns bring on new talent to solve problems but prefer not to eject existing personnel to avoid the appearance of turmoil.
"The campaign was going around in circles – and not just circles, the kind of circles you see in a toilet bowl," Mr. Cunningham said. "They were spiralling down and they're hoping to break that cycle."
For his part, Mr. Manafort brought a degree of professional experience to Mr. Trump's campaign but also a fresh dose of controversy. A series of media reports have detailed how Mr. Manafort profited from lucrative political work on behalf of pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Mr. Manafort helped route $2.2-million (U.S.) to American lobbying firms in such a way that hid their source: the pro-Russia governing party in Ukraine.
"This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign," Mr. Trump said in a statement on Friday. "I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process."
At various points during the campaign, Mr. Manafort tried to urge Mr. Trump away from some of his more questionable moves. For instance, two days after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Mr. Trump tweeted a photo of himself eating a taco salad with the caption, "I love Hispanics!" Mr. Manafort warned that the post could be considered condescending and advised against it, according to The Huffington Post. He was overruled.