Subject: RE: ABC News: Trump Campaign Announces Expanded Role For Paul Manafort
From: "Helmstetter, TJ" <[email-masked]>
To: "Roberts, Kelly" <[email-masked]>, "Bennett, Eric" <[email-masked]>, Comm_D <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 11:37:17 -0700

This is hilarious and we should blast it
"Did Donald demote himself from chief strategist?"

From: Roberts, Kelly
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:56 PM
To: Bennett, Eric; Comm_D
Subject: RE: ABC News: Trump Campaign Announces Expanded Role For Paul Manafort

The role is an obvious promotion for Manafort, but sources stressed it should not be seen as a demotion for campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Did Donald get demoted then?

Trump On His Campaign Team: "I'm The Strategist." "Trump's campaign employs a core team of about a dozen people; his campaign lists 94 people on the payroll nationwide, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing (Hillary Clinton has 765). Trump has no pollsters, media coaches, or speechwriters. He focus-groups nothing. He buys few ads, and when he does, he likes to write them himself. He also writes his own tweets, his main vehicle for communicating with his supporters. And it was his idea to adopt Ronald Reagan's slogan 'Make America Great Again!' 'I'm the strategist,' Trump told me. Which would make him, no matter what your feelings about his beliefs or his qualifications to govern a country, one of the greatest political savants of the modern era." [New York Magazine, 4/4/16<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/inside-the-donald-trump-presidential-campaign.html>]

From: Bennett, Eric
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 1:51 PM
To: Comm_D
Subject: ABC News: Trump Campaign Announces Expanded Role For Paul Manafort

Trump Campaign Announces Expanded Role For Paul Manafort<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-campaign-announces-expanded-role-paul-manafort/story?id=39231973>

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-campaign-announces-expanded-role-paul-manafort/story?id=39231973

By JOHN SANTUCCI  NEW YORK, NY - May 19, 2016, 1:45 PM ET

Donald Trump will change the role for one of his campaign's top advisors, ABC News has learned.

Sources within the campaign said that Trump will name Paul Manafort to the new role of Campaign Chairman and Chief Strategist.

Manafort, who was brought on board early last month as a convention manager, was originally tasked with trying to secure Trump the necessary delegates to avoid a fight at the Republican convention.

With Trump now the likely presumptive nominee for the GOP, Manafort's new role is a natural growth of the campaign as they begin to build a team ready for the general election, according to the sources. The role is an obvious promotion for Manafort, but sources stressed it should not be seen as a demotion for campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks confirmed the move, adding that Lewandowski will, "continue overseeing day to day operations and will work with Manafort on political strategy and communications, among other things, through the general election."

Manafort is arguably more from the establishment than most of Trump's relatively young staff, who helped the Republican front-runner in early primary victories.

His particular experience is relevant to Trump's position. Manafort played a significant role in the 1976 convention where Gerald Ford ended up winning the nomination in spite of a fight from Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole.

In later years, Manafort went on to work for Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Manafort was on Capitol Hill earlier today meeting with Republican leadership.

"There's a growing number of people supporting us. We feel very comfortable that even more will be supporting us next trip," Manafort told ABC News. "They all recognize now that we definitely can win, and they want to know what kind of issues we will be stressing, which we'll be doing in the next month or two."

Trump will be returning to the campaign trail with a rally today in New Jersey that will also serve as a fundraiser for Governor Chris Christie.