The question is not who is running Donald Trump's campaign, but rather, how many people are running Donald Trump's campaign?
Is it Paul Manafort? Son-in-law Jared Kushner? The kids? All reports are that the correct answer would be, "All of the above."
According to a story in
Politico, Kushner, who's married to Ivanka Trump, has quietly — and without title — been managing many parts of the campaign while Manafort has solely been focused on the GOP convention.
But that loose informal structure was exposed in embarrassing fashion when Melania Trump's Monday night speech on the first night of the convention lifted passages from a Michelle Obama speech in 2008.
Though Manafort took center stage to refute any notion of plagiarism, the campaign struggled to take control and get ahead of the gaffe. A private Tuesday morning call with Team Trump did little to assuage insiders let alone the public aftermath.
"This was the candidate's wife's speech," one top aide told Bloomberg. "Now, it's about the
structure of the campaign and who is in charge. Manafort and [top deputy Rick] Gates were supposed to be the A-team, but no one is even taking ownership of this."
"Not paying attention to details — that costs elections," a campaign source told
NBC News.
The children, according to the Politico, are Trump's trusted advisers and the best surrogates he has to evangelize him on the stump and TV interviews, but, like their father, they are not political operatives.
And with Manafort managing the big-picture convention plans, whose job was it to vet Melania's speech in the first place? The answer there is seemingly, "None of the above."
"It's piss-poor staff work," a campaign source told NBC News. "Melania has been humiliated. No doubt heads are going to roll."