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I didn't know Manafort until he was tapped by Trump and for some unknown reason, without any info on him, I had a bad feeling.

I don't claim any pseudo-psychic insight but just reading his name for the first time I had a gut feeling it was a bad choice by the Trump team.

I was a bit ticked off when the Trump team dumped Corey Lewandowski after the Michelle Fields set-up.

At the time I was being told Manafort had to take over because Lewandowski was out of his league at that point.

But Lewandowski got Trump in with his gut feelings about the electorate.

Manafort, I feared, would just be another 'establishment hack' who would listen to the polls instead of his instincts.

I don't know Manafort personally but from the get go I saw him as old school establishment and dangerous to Trump.

Frankly, I believe Trump won not because of Manafort but in spite of Manafort.

In defense of the Trump team, they brought Manafort in for a specific part of the campaign when there was a decent possibility they'd have to deal with a brokered convention where Trump had the most delegates but didn't have enough to get more than 50% of them. Manafort worked on the last GOP campaign where that scenario played out -- in 1976 with Gerald Ford.

I believe some of the senior people close to Trump were very suspicious of him all along, and he was dumped as campaign manager when Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon took on key roles in August 2016.