New revelations about the foreign financial ties of Donald Trump’s campaign chairman are threatening to steal the thunder from the Republican presidential nominee’s much-hyped foreign policy speech, adding to the turmoil that has engulfed his presidential bid.
Paul Manafort on Monday blasted a New York Times report that detailed secret ledgers in Ukraine showing more than $12 million in cash earmarked for him.
While it has long been known that Manafort did extensive work on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party in the 2000s, these specific payments had not been publicly known, and Ukrainian investigators believe the payments were part of an illegal off-the-books system, according to the Times' report on Sunday.
“Once again, the New York Times has chosen to purposefully ignore facts and professional journalism to fit their political agenda, choosing to attack my character and reputation rather than present an honest report,” Manafort said Monday. “The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly and nonsensical.”
The fresh questions about Manafort’s dealings come as Trump struggles to once again right his flailing campaign. Since formally claiming the Republican nomination last month, Trump has committed a series of potentially self-destructive blunders, dominating the news cycle with a succession of negative headlines.
The real estate mogul encouraged espionage by inviting Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, sparred for days with a Gold Star family who spoke out against him at the Democratic National Convention, refused — albeit temporarily — to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Arizona Sen. John McCain in their reelection bids, suggested the November election will be rigged against him, seemingly incited violence by remarking that “Second Amendment people” may be the only ones able to stop Clinton, and claimed President Barack Obama and Clinton were founders and MVPs of the Islamic State — a comment he insisted was sarcasm, though hours afterward he said it wasn’t “that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”
Trump’s self-inflicted wounds have gashed his polling numbers, as recent surveys show Clinton leading in a series of battleground states, and sparked defections from GOP lawmakers like Maine Sen. Susan Collins and North Carolina Rep. Richard Hanna and dozens of former Republican administration officials.
More than 70 Republicans signed an open letter to Reince Priebus urging the Republican National Committee chairman to dump Trump and shift funds to House and Senate races.
But the billionaire’s foreign policy speech Monday afternoon on defeating the Islamic State is supposed to be yet another opportunity for Trump to reset the race and stay on message. In it, Trump is expected to propose screening immigrants with an ideological questionnaire to determine whether potential immigrants support American values.
It’s unclear, though, if Trump is willing — or perhaps able — to change. Trump himself said last week that he needs to “keep just doing the same thing I’m doing right now” to close in on Clinton’s swing-state advantage.
But in a stunning acknowledgment from a man who boasts about America winning so much under his leadership that Americans will beg President Trump to stop winning, he intimated during the same interview that his approach could be his downfall.
“At the end it's either going to work or I'm going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice long vacation,” he said.