What was Trump thinking hiring these corrupt baboons? Where did the names even come up?
I asked myself the same queston. I think the answer is, "Mr Trump tries to go to Washington. Who does he hire?" He has to ask around, and he's going to pick up some losers until he figures out the new environment.
Manafort had a high profile, and seemed really smooth. It wasn't obvious for a month or so how much dirty laundry he came with and how it could work against Trump.
The way I look at it, Trump was out on his own during the primaries. The GOP offered no help, and were actively against him. All the while, he's in the midst of the firestorm of primary season, trying to compete in every state, without any previous experience or little guidance.
Sure, he made some mistakes in hiring, and he corrected it and learned from it. Basically, he had wandered into the snake pit of national politics while the establishment and the media were firing at him constantly. That he was able to win is a credit to the people who looked past the problems on the campaign trail, and to Trump for not giving up.
Gates worked for Manafort since 2006. Manafort worked for Ford, Reagan, Bush & Dole.
Trump, with a campaign staff of about 4 people, needed an experienced person to whip the convention vote. The RNC was openly hostile to Trump so he relied on a recommendation. Two days after receiving his first security briefing, which seemed to include info derogatory to Manafort, Trump took immediate action and fired him.
Chain of events from wiki :
...In February 2016 Manafort approached Donald Trump through a mutual friend, Thomas J. Barrack Jr.
... In March 2016 he joined Trump’s presidential campaign to take the lead in getting commitments from convention delegates
...In June 2016, Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and promoted Manafort to the position.
...In August 2016, Manafort’s connections to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions drew national attention
...On August 17, 2016, Donald Trump received his first security briefing.[38] The same day, August 17, Trump shook up his campaign organization in a way that appeared to minimize Manafort’s role.
...two days later, Trump announced his acceptance of Manafort’s resignation
This is what I have read recently about Paul Manafort:
He used to be a whizz-kid spin doctor in Washington winning at everything he did. He literally couldn’t lose as when handling primaries his firm represented all the contenders. He was so good that he managed to make African warlords and Arab arms dealers respectable.
He had a character flaw though. He stole from his business partners. Now this part is why I believe it is not just another MSM smear campaign as the interviewed former business partners didn’t have anything nice to say about him.
So this reputation finally caught up with him and Washington wasn’t a place for him any more. He went to work with Russian oligarchs and took a gamble trying to become very rich himself. Then the economic crises happened and he ended up owing a lot of people a lot of money. Importantly he owed a Russian gangster named Oleg Deripaska something like $19 million.
He didn’t seem to have seen a way out and checked into some fancy depression clinic. After brooding there for a while he started acting again and approached Donald Trump. He said he is a big admirer and offered to work for no salary while representing himself as still successful. Trump is not impartial to flattery and he ended up making him part of his campaign, later his campaign manager. A telling thing of Manafort’s true motivation is that once this was announced he sent a newspaper clipping announcing it to Oleg Deripaska and suggested this is a way to settle the debt.
Now this is my conjecture, but I think it is significant that Trump fired Manafort the day after receiving his first secret intelligence briefing.