Trump's shakeup could inflame campaign tensions 'Bannon is another gas pedal like Lewandowski, and Kellyanne is a brake,' a campaign source says.

Donald Trump, whose faltering presidential bid appears to be reaching a crisis point, is reshuffling his campaign’s senior leadership for the second time in two months.

The Republican nominee tapped pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager and Breitbart News Chairman Stephen Bannon as campaign chief executive — two advisers who seem destined to clash over letting Trump be Trump.


Trump has known Conway, who initially worked on Ted Cruz's presidential campaign, for several years, but he has only recently come to know Bannon, mostly through Breitbart's fawning coverage of his campaign.

"He hasn’t had Trump’s ear forever, but Trump respects him," said a campaign source, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "If you counted all the lipstick on Trump’s backside, most of it would be Breitbart red. So he’s earned his way to where he is."

Bannon also has the backing of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the father-daughter donor duo that bankrolled Cruz super PACs last year and are now funding a super PAC attacking Hillary Clinton, as well as Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidant who is a regular contributor to Breitbart.

While the campaign and Trump loyalists are framing the new hires as an expansion and not a shakeup or demotion of campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, they come as the campaign is sliding in polls due to a string of controversies stemming from Trump's own impolitic pronouncements — and after Manafort and other more experienced senior staffers have failed to persuade Trump to tone down his message and commit to paid television ads.

Bannon, who has encouraged Trump's combative campaign style and defended even his most mendacious statements, is not likely to push Trump or his populist message toward the political center. Conway, on the other hand, has been gently leaning on Trump to temper his tone and explaining how some of his ad-libs and attack lines are having an adverse effect, according to campaign sources.

"I worry that they aren't going to be a united front when it comes to Trump toning down some of his marginal rhetoric and that there's just going to be more turmoil," the campaign source continued. "Bannon is another gas pedal like Lewandowski, and Kellyanne is a brake."

However, one campaign staffer said the moves seemed to be well-received by many fellow staffers. “Part of it is the good optics of having a woman at the top,” the staffer said, though he added that Conway was also "substantively very good."

Conway herself gave a rosy assessment of her and Bannon's ability to work together, while talking to a small group of reporters on Wednesday. "Steve Bannon and I have tremendous respect for each other as colleagues and as friends and we also have the trust of Donald Trump the candidate," she said, according to a pool report. "You first of all have the trust of the candidate and the latitude."

She added that she expects to be on the campaign trail and serve as a surrogate on TV, while Bannon will be anchoring operations at the headquarters in Trump Tower. "We have different styles, but we have one vision," Conway said.

Trump heaped praise on both operatives in the campaign's official announcement, which came hours after he delivered a polished but still characteristically provocative speech in which he also appealed to minority voters in Wisconsin while accusing Hillary Clinton of "bigotry."

“I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years. They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win,” said Trump. “I believe we’re adding some of the best talents in politics, with the experience and expertise needed to defeat Hillary Clinton in November and continue to share my message and vision to make America great again. I am committed to doing whatever it takes to win this election, and ultimately become president because our country cannot afford four more years of the failed Obama-Clinton policies which have endangered our financial and physical security.”

The campaign proudly referenced Bloomberg Politics' description of Bannon as the "most dangerous political operative in America," noting that the hire comes as Trump rolls out the first major TV ad buy of the general election and "with additional top-flight operatives joining the movement on a near-daily basis."

Manafort, who had been effectively running the campaign for the past two months after the firing of former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, will stay on in his current position.

“It is imperative we continue to expand our team with top-tier talent," Manafort said in the campaign statement. "Steve and Kellyanne are respected professionals who believe in Mr. Trump and his message and will undoubtedly help take the campaign to new levels of success.”

Manafort, a veteran of several GOP presidential campaigns, had been brought aboard in late March to professionalize a shoestring campaign operation run by relative neophytes and powered largely by Trump's dominance of the news cycle through social media and mega-rallies.

Manafort emerged victorious from a power struggle with Lewandowski, who was fired in June, but the Trump operation never came to resemble a traditional presidential campaign as Trump himself rejected much of the counsel offered by Manafort and several of the experienced operatives he hired. Meanwhile, Lewandowski, according to mulitple sources, has continued to advise Trump privately and to undermine Manafort's attempts to steer Trump in a different direction.

Manafort's associates privately conceded in recent weeks that he'd grown frustrated with his futile effort to instill message discipline in the candidate. And this week, things got harder for Manafort with a series of damaging stories about his past work for pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs.

Conway, who has long served as a pollster for Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has been working with the Trump campaign since July.

In an email, she noted that Rick Gates, a close ally of Manafort, would remain in his role as a senior aide to the campaign and that those two, along with herself and Bannon, would now form a four-person campaign brain trust of sorts.

"Rick is fabulous and he and Paul have built a solid operation,” she said in an email. The “expansion [is going] to accelerate our reach with just weeks to go.”

Bannon has been quietly advising people around the Trump campaign for months but has no actual campaign experience. His role as "CEO" is unclear, although campaign sources expect him to provide more creative and communications-related input rather than filling a managerial role.

"Bannon is brilliant, but they’re looking for a CEO who organizes things into buckets, that’s not his strength," a source said. "He’s infamously unorganized, but that’s what makes him creative. His strength is breakout ideas."

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.