Donald Trump and his allies had been privately celebrating Hillary Clinton’s stumbles — first on the campaign trail last weekend and then in the polls this week, which seemed to tighten dramatically after the former secretary of state was forced to disclose that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia and misled the media and the public about it.
Then, just as the conventional wisdom was beginning to harden that he could defeat Clinton, Trump capped what was shaping up as the best week of his campaign by descending back into a conspiracy theory surrounding the country of President Obama’s birth. The incident, which concluded at a press conference this morning where Trump declared that the president was born in the United States, “period,” raised questions about whether his newly installed campaign aides can keep the candidate from sinking his own bid for the White House between now and the November election.
It was the first major stumble for Trump since he replaced former campaign chairman Paul Manafort last month with a new team consisting of campaign CEO Steve Bannon, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, and deputy campaign manager David Bossie.
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