Paul Manafort Is Back

On the morning of July 18, the first day of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a group of reporters covering the presidential campaign packed themselves around a long table for an on-the-record breakfast with Paul Manafort—the seasoned political hand who, as chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, had the unenviable task of trying to soften the candidate’s rough edges. Manafort, 67, was sharply dressed, as usual. As one of the most successful lobbyists of the Reagan-Bush era, he’d developed a taste for the finer things: handcrafted Italian suits and Parisian shirts; homes in Palm Beach, the Hamptons, and Trump Tower. Now back on the scene after almost a decade out of the public eye, Manafort looked a little beleaguered. The road to Cleveland had been rocky. Trump was entering the convention without the unified support of his party, and no one in the pundit class seemed to believe he could hold himself together long enough to convince anyone he had the temperament to lead.

But over the course of an hour, Manafort calmly and steadily made a case for how and why Trump would prevail. The system, Manafort said, was “rigged.” Hillary Clinton, along with elites like the people in the room, didn’t understand how struggling Americans cared more about improving economic opportunity than addressing social issues. “This is an election about change,” he said flatly. “We have a candidate who everybody recognizes is a change candidate, and we’re running against the epitome of Establishment. I mean, you tell me any candidate—I couldn’t pick one off the shelf better than Hillary Clinton to run against on change-vs.-Establishment.” This wasn’t just spin, he argued; it was math. His internal polling, he said, all but confirmed Clinton’s inability to transcend her base. “To the 11 million voters in the several states we have to target, her profile is terrible,” he said. “People don’t see her as somebody who can solve the problem.”