The Trump campaign just dumped Rick Wiley, the political director they hired just six weeks ago. CNN says tensions between Wiley — a former national political director for the RNC who was brought on board to get the campaign’s ground game up to something at least resembling a professional level — and Corey Lewandowski — the campaign manager who lied about grabbing a female reporter for Breitbart and bruising her arm — reached a boiling point on Wednesday.
CNN quotes a GOP campaign veteran familiar with the tensions inside the campaign as saying "Wiley was trying to bring in experienced operatives who knew what the hell they were doing." In particular, Wiley clashed with the Florida state director Lewandowski had hired. Lewandowski wanted Trump’s original team to take the lead in battleground states.
www.cnn.com/...
"Florida was the tip of the iceberg," one operative said, adding that Wiley's bottom line was essentially, "either you let me do this my way with people who can actually do the job or there's no point continuing this."
Two campaign sources said Wiley was fired. Wiley did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
Wiley had been seen as an important bridge between the Trump campaign and the party establishment. Trump has been dismissive of the value of data or a well-prepared ground game, instead emphasizing the value of (no surprise here) the candidate himself.
The most significant takeaway from this internecine strife is that the Trump campaign believes its own bullshit. They are under the impression that because they won the GOP nomination — against an extremely weak field — using bullying tactics and dog whistles to the not-insignificant number of racists, sexists and xenophobes in the Republican base, that the same seat-of-their-pants approach will work in the general election. They actually think they know what they’re doing.
UPDATE: Politico has more on how Wiley essentially was building a Florida operation from scratch and had no use for state campaign director Karen Giorno, but she has the support of Lewandowski and Trump.
www.politico.com/…
This reinforces a larger rift with the GOP establishment, and the arrogance inside the campaign:
“Rick has RNC tattooed on his forehead. He’s not part of the Trump culture,” a Trump source said. “Wiley was someone who didn’t understand what we were able to do, and he wasn’t interested in being a part of the team in the end anyway.”
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