Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his management style in response to several stories about his tumultuous campaign staff, even bragging that he’s succeeded thus far with a small team.
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“The media is on a new phony kick about my management style,” Trump tweeted. “I spend much less money & get much better results! What we need as Prez!”
Trump’s campaign operations have become a cause for alarm among Republicans, because he’s depending on the Republican National Committee for manpower and finances after his senior adviser told Senate Republicans they’re low on money. But it’s the internal power struggles within his campaign staff that have drawn the gaze of the political class in recent weeks.
“A sense of paranoia is growing among his campaign staff members, including some who have told associates they believe that their Trump Tower offices in New York may be bugged,” the New York Times reported Friday.
Trump was not pleased by the coverage and used it as an opening to go after the New York Times, one of his favorite foils. “The failing @nytimes wrote a story about my management style & that I don’t have many people,” he tweeted. “I have 73, Hillary has 800- & I’m beating her.”
The Washington Post offered a similar insight on Saturday. “Interviews with current and former Trump associates reveal an executive who is fond of promoting rivalries among subordinates, wary of delegating major decisions, scornful of convention and fiercely insistent on a culture of loyalty around him,” as authors Robert Costa and Sean Sullivan put it.
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was demoted when Trump hired Paul Manafort as a new senior adviser, but his stock may be on the rise given that the nominee has already fired one of the top political staffers whom Manafort brought into the campaign.
“Of course there’s competition because you want the best,” Lewandowski said in defense of Trump’s management, in an Associated Press interview published Friday. “That’s the type of mindset you have to have in the federal government.”
