Trump critics scoff at campaign shuffle Republicans and Democrats alike dismiss the idea that Trump will change — 'Trump is Trump.'

Donald Trump’s critics on both sides of the aisle scoffed at the shakeup of his top aides, arguing the Manhattan businessman needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror to figure out the root cause of his woes.

For weeks, Trump has been hit with tanking poll numbers, distracted by political opponents not named Hillary Clinton and staring down the distinct possibility that his last 14 months could all have been for naught. With Stephen Bannon, the brash and bare-knuckled executive of Breitbart News, coming on as Trump's campaign CEO and chief pollster Kellyanne Conway boosted to the role of campaign manager, the Manhattan businessman vowed to "do whatever it takes to win this election."


The announcement came hours after a well-received policy speech in Wisconsin in which he trained his "law and order" message onto the ongoing unrest in the Milwaukee area following another police-involved shooting, while accusing Clinton and the Democratic Party of "bigotry" toward African-Americans. And, as the Trump campaign blasted out in an early-morning announcement email, the move comes as he rolls out his first general election TV ads later this week, promising "additional top-flight operatives joining the movement on a near-daily basis."

Noted Never Trump critic Bill Kristol mocked the notion that Trump's gambit would pay off in the long run.

"I don’t think it matters because the problem is Donald Trump," the Weekly Standard editor told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "You know, his unfavorable rating has been consistently too high to win a presidential election. Hillary Clinton’s, you would normally say is too high, but it’s about 10 points lower than Trump’s."

In an ordinary election where a candidate from the party of the incumbent president is treading water in terms of public approval, Republicans would generally be ahead at this point, Kristol said, while acknowledging that he could still see Trump ultimately prevailing.

Mike Murphy, the former head of Jeb Bush’s super PAC, said he was “dubious” the shakeup means Trump’s serious about changing his ways.

“You know, we've been through a couple of these. And we've got plenty of time left,” Murphy said on MSNBC. “Could Trump change? Maybe. But he's Trump. It's unlikely. Like, my Labrador could walk up to the piano and start playing. Not going to bet on it. Trump is Trump."

Paul Begala, the senior adviser to the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, also said the campaign can shuffle around advisers all it wants — it won’t make such of a difference.

"It's the candidate, stupid," Begala remarked, borrowing a phrase from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, on which he served as chief strategist.

Begala also compared Trump's moves to rearranging the deck chairs on the fated Titanic.

And given the Breitbart's reputation for viciously attacking the Republican establishment, there are concerns on Capitol Hill and beyond that Trump’s decision to hire Bannon may turn off some GOP allies once and for all. The grief was already starting to emerge on Wednesday, with one senior Republican aide told POLITICO, “If the underlying thinking with the move is to better enable Donald being Donald, he is toast."

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has drawn no shortage of negative coverage from Breitbart, has remained silent so far. But Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck suggested Wednesday that he, if not his boss, were barely holding their tongues.

“I have shelved so many hot takes this morning I can’t even tell you,” Buck tweeted.

Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook ripped into Trump's decision to hire Bannon in particular, quoting the Southern Poverty Law Center's assessment that he has led the publication toward fringe conservative ideas.

"After several failed attempts to pivot into a more serious and presidential mode, Donald Trump has decided to double down on his most small, nasty and divisive instincts," Mook said during a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon. "What’s become clear is no matter how much the establishment wants to clean him up, he has officially won the fight to let trump be trump. he keeps telling us who he is it’s time we believe him."

Mook denounced Breitbart News under Bannon for running "a so-called news site that peddles divisive, at times racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories" while also rejecting the notion that Conway would help bring women voters to Trump.

"People are going to make up all kinds of stories and make up all kinds of allegations," Mook said, but adding that what matters is that Clinton is "going to get out there and talk about what she's really going to do."

But Trump's moves earned effusive praise from former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was fired in June amid a power struggle with chairman Paul Manafort, who will maintain his title despite the elevation of Bannon and Conway.

"He wants to have people around him who want to win at all costs," Lewandowski said during a segment on CNN's "New Day," batting down the notion that the hire of Bannon, once described by Bloomberg Politics as the "most dangerous political operative in America," could present any future problems for his former boss.

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo remarked to Lewandowski of Breitbart's history of harsh rhetoric, including comparing the network employing both men to "Hitler."

"If you look at Steven Bannon and what they’ve built at Breitbart, it's win at all costs," Lewandowski said. "And I think that makes some people on the left very afraid because they're willing to say and do things that others in the mainstream media wouldn't do. They've attacked the mainstream media on multiple occasions. And so what they’re willing to say and do, I think right now that's the type of mind set the campaign wants to prove to the Clinton people, that they're going to take this fight directly to her and that’s what he’s going to take to the campaign."

Trump supporter and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani boasted that Trump's moves showed political mastery.

"The campaign is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. A lot of people think he has no organization. Good. I like them to think that," Giuliani said on "Fox & Friends." "The reality is I've traveled to a number of states with Donald and I've seen the organization he has."

Giuliani also called Trump's recent scripted addresses in Ohio and Wisconsin appealing to voters' concerns about national security the "two most substantive, I would say historic speeches that any presidential candidate has made in a very long time."

But lest anyone think the shakeup marked a reset of Trump’s campaign, the candidate himself dismissed the notion of a course correction just hours before the news broke.

“I am who I am. It’s me,” Trump told Wisconsin news station WKBT-TV on Tuesday. “I don’t wanna change. Everybody talks about oh, well you’re gonna pivot, you’re gonna — I don’t wanna pivot. I mean, you have to be you. If you start pivoting, you’re not being honest with people.”

National spokeswoman Katrina Pierson harangued CNN and the media at large on Wednesday morning for its focus on Bannon’s hire.

“He's not in charge of communications, he's just the CEO. He's run several successful companies in the past. He's running it as a business, which people also complain about. No one's out. When you shake up your campaign, that usually means someone is out,” Pierson said. “This was announced as an expansion. I can point to several messages, we have sent out on the campaign website under press releases. We've had multiple expansions of this campaign. But for some reason, CNN is probably the only one reporting that there's some shake-up that's happening.”

The announcement does not represent a shakeup, Pierson repeated.

“This is simply an expansion,” she said. “We can ignore what the campaign is actually saying and make all the inferences that we want. That seems to be what is called news today. But the facts are, we simply added to the campaign team. There's nothing new there.”

Annie Karni, Seung Min Kim and Louis Nelson contributed to this report.