Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort is surrounded by reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention at Quicken Loans Arena, Sunday, July 17, in Cleveland. | AP Photo Manafort: Urban unrest, protests help Trump Strategist blames Obama and Clinton for uprisings, says Trump ‘doesn't have to’ propose a plan.

CLEVELAND — Donald Trump’s top strategist, Paul Manafort, views Sunday’s fatal shooting of Baton Rouge police officers as part of a “pattern of lawlessness” in American cities that is likely to bolster the real estate mogul's law and order campaign.

Hours before the Republican National Convention officially opens here, Manafort told reporters that Trump, who yesterday described the country as a “crime scene,” plans to continue to blame President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and their “failed leadership” for the growing unrest in American cities and around the world.


Asked if Trump will present a plan to calm the unease, Manafort was blunt: “He doesn’t have to because the crisis is caused by the current government. Eventually, of course, he’ll present his solutions. But right now he’s pointing out the causes.”

Manafort told reporters at an on-the-record breakfast discussion sponsored by Bloomberg Politics that African-Americans in the inner cities are frustrated by a “rigged system,” one laid bare by the FBI’s decision not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

“It creates a system of justice people don’t think is fair,” he said. “When you’re black living in the inner city and you see that, the message is the system doesn’t seem to work.”

Trump’s rhetoric, which some have called divisive, isn’t aimed at exacerbating tensions, just demonstrating an awareness of what’s actually happening, Manafort argued — even as he acknowledged how continued disorder and angst is likely to bolster Trump’s support.

“What Trump is saying is the truth that’s being called divisive,” Manafort said. “He’s saying that the cities are a mess. Trying to paper over it, he wouldn’t be the nominee.

“We’ve got to identify the problem,” he continued. “The people want to know that the candidate understands it.”

Manafort also shrugged off the possibility of protests engulfing the RNC, although he noted that disorder in the streets of downtown Cleveland, should it materialize, would likely accrue to Trump’s benefit. “Frankly, that impact will probably help the campaign because it’s going to show a lawlessness and lack of respect for political discourse,” he said.

Trump, who said he plans to speak on the convention’s opening night Monday, will officially accept the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday. His speech will not be ad-libbed, Manafort said, noting that experienced speechwriters are assisting the campaign’s in-house writer Stephen Miller and are currently on a third or fourth draft of the remarks but that the candidate himself is closely involved in the process.

“The speech will be him,” said Manafort, noting that Richard Nixon’s acceptance speech at the 1968 RNC is one Trump himself liked and may look to for inspiration.

In 1968, as riots were engulfing Detroit and Chicago, Nixon spoke of “cities enveloped in smoke and flame … sirens in the night” and lamented “Americans hating each other, fighting each other, killing each other at home.”

In his speech, Nixon vowed to hear other voices, “the voices of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.”

“This is the real voice of America,” Nixon said.

Although the current convention may take on a hard-edged urgency with its heightened focus on present upheaval and focus heavily on law and order themes, it is also largely an effort to show a softer side of the trash-talking, boastful nominee, Manafort said. That explains why Trump’s family members and a handful of his employees and business associates have been given prime-time speaking slots over Republican political leaders.

“The goal of this convention is not to talk about growing the party, it’s identifying who Donald Trump is,” Manafort said.

“I believe once Donald Trump is accepted by the American people as someone who can be president, the race will be over with. I don’t know when that will be, but that’s our job and the convention is the beginning of that.”