What changed? The entry of Paul Manafort – a political consultant extraordinaire with a colourful history abroad who arrived at Trump HQ with a bunch of his old consultant cronies. Paul Manafort has denied any links to Putin. Credit:Bloomberg Campaign observers were told Manafort was on board to fix a serious problem – catching up with the grassroots brilliance of Ted Cruz's campaign in ensuring that convention delegates who were appointed or elected at state level were loyal to Trump, and not so much to Cruz. But within days it seemed Manafort had taken over the entire campaign – and instead of Trump being Trump, Manafort was giving the candidate one heck of a makeover. A good soul attending a meeting of the Republican National Committee last week, kindly recorded and leaked Manafort's pitch on how perfect his re-groomed Trump would be.

Attempting to assuage RNC anxiety about Trump, we heard Manafort confiding that all Trump's bombast and wild rhetoric was just an act – "projecting an image" – to win votes. Armed with a PowerPoint presentation, Manafort assures them that the candidate was "evolving"; he would show "more depth"; and he would change "the part that he's been playing". Something wooden in his walk? Donald Trump approaches the podium to deliver a speech defanged of his usual rhetoric. Credit:AP And so we had Wednesday's foreign policy speech in Washington, in which the non-Trump gave a speech that really wasn't his own. Its bones were recognisable. But absent were some of the real crowd-pleasers from the hustings, old faithfuls like Trump's proposal to bar Muslims from entering the US; bombing the bejesus out of Islamic State; encouraging Japan and South Korea to go nuclear; a 45 per cent trade tariff to whack sense into the Chinese; the warning that the refugee hordes are actually a terrorist Trojan Horse; and Mexico will be made to pay for Trump's proposed border wall. Anti-government protesters in Kiev who succeeded in ousting Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Credit:Getty Images

And who ever heard Trump utter lines like "the false song of globalism" and "the clear lens of American interests" – so yes, Trump did not write that speech. It seems that Trump is caught between loyalty to his old self and personality and to campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Manafort's dictum on what a candidate should look like. Donald Trump assures Americans that he will advocate for their interests. First order of business: reducing tensions with Russia. Credit:Bloomberg Dancing to Manafort's tune As reported by Politico, Trump was bristling at the Manafort gang's takeover and he thought Manafort had stepped way beyond his brief. As a result, Lewandowski would be reinstated; but in giving his foreign policy speech on Wednesday, Trump was still dancing to Manafort's tune.

Look closely: Donald Trump flanked by teleprompters. Credit:Bloomberg Some have detected a more wooden walk, which they presume is how Trump has been told a president should walk. But he has been reassuring rallies that he would not go the way of Manafort – telling a Saturday crowd: "If I acted presidential, I can guarantee you this morning, I wouldn't be here"; and on Monday, he was the Trump we know, calling Ohio Governor John Kasich a "slob", and Cruz an "ass". Oh – also getting under Trump's skin were news reports that Manafort had been making big bucks as a consultant to the government of Saudi Arabia and to a group that apparently was a front for Pakistan's discredited intelligence service, ISI. Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych in Moscow in 2013, where Yanukovych now lives. Credit:AP And this is where the Manafort story gets really interesting.

Manafort, 67, has always been in the Trump orbit – he has an apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan; in the 1980s he did lobbying work for Trump's gambling and real estate interests; and one of his former partners, Roger Stone, is a sometime adviser to Trump. Not a Trump property: a room inside former Ukrainian president – and Paul Manafort's former client – President Viktor Yanukovych's Mezhyhirya estate, which was abandoned by security after it was stormed by an angry crowd in Kiev in 2014. Credit:Getty By all accounts Manafort's lobbying business was built on an impressive earlier political career – on the ground for the GOP's last brokered convention in 1976, he helped candidate Gerald Ford hold the nomination in the face of an assault by Ronald Reagan. Later, Manafort worked on Reagan's successful campaigns. But in private business Manafort seemingly went to the dark side, with a shabby but deep-pocketed client list that reportedly included the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko, of Zaire, and Ferdinand Marcos, of the Philippines, both crooked dictators who stole national wealth worth billions of dollars.

Won Ukrainian election The precise natures of Manafort's efforts for the disgraced leader Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country amid the Maidan protests and the brutal crackdown by security forces in 2014, are not known. But as Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes: "We do know how Yanukovych won the Ukrainian election in 2010, and how he ran the country. "Perhaps Manafort can transmit some lessons from his experience for a would-be US president. Yanukovych did undergo a profound 'image makeover' strikingly similar to the one that Trump needs right now. "Yanukovych was an ex-con, close to Russian-backed business interests in Ukraine. He had, in other words, 'high negatives,' but he cleaned up his act, stopped using criminal jargon and presented himself as a 'reform' candidate ... and won, despite the fact that he was no more honest than the people he'd said he was trying to beat." So what can we expect if Trump wins the republican nomination?

Stone, the Manafort associate, is known as a "scorched earth" muckraker and, as Politico reports, he co-authored a book that dredges up Clinton scandals and recently he claimed that the Clintons should "be worried" about him because "I know exactly how to take them down". 'I'm in Ted Cruz's head' Described as a "former Dick Nixon dirty trickster", Stone was named by Cruz as the source of a sensational story in the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer alleging that Cruz had had a series of extramarital affairs. Cruz denies the alleged affairs; Stone denies that he was the plant – but he enjoys that Cruz thinks he was. Stone told Politico: "I think I'm in Ted Cruz's head right now. He's got his paid shills, Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, attacking me viciously ... I have to assume that Ted is laying awake at night worrying about what I'm doing next." And that's what Stone wants to do to Hillary and Bill Clinton. He says: "Part of the strategy ... is to psych out the opposition. There's no question that Karl Rove got into John Kerry's head [in the 2004 campaign] ... I think [the Clintons] are more vulnerable than most because they have more crimes to hide."

Stone predicts that two elements of the campaign will deliver the presidency to Trump – first, is the secret dirt he plans to drop on the Clintons; and second, Trump's innate capacity to project strength through mass media. News and reality TV same to voters Talking about Trump's celebrity status as one of the candidate's greatest assets, enhanced as it was by 15 seasons of Trump's reality TV show The Apprentice, Stone tells Politico: "I understand that elites look at that and say, 'Oh, it's reality TV'. "But to voters, there's no line between the news and reality TV. "It's all television. If you see Trump in The Apprentice, he's in the high-backed chair. He's perfectly lit. He's perfectly made up. He's perfectly coiffed. He's perfectly dressed. And he's decisive. He's tough. He's making decisions.

"He looks and acts like what you think a president should be." Follow FairfaxForeign on Twitter Follow Fairfax Foreign on Facebook