Donald Trump's surprise move to hand the reins of his campaign to a right-wing firebrand was seen Wednesday as a formalized revival of his bare-knuckled, anti-establishment strategy and a rebuke to prominent Republican strategists who doubt its power to win the White House.
The hiring of Stephen K. Bannon, who runs a conservative site that often attacks top Republicans, also crushed longstanding hopes within the party that their nominee would tone down his rhetoric, a shift that now-sidelined campaign chairman Paul Manafort had promised for months.
If Corey Lewandowski, the first person to run Trump's campaign, symbolized the campaign's ragtag early days, and Manafort, the second, represented its professionalization, the Bannon hire suggests a return to the original "let Trump be Trump" ethos, along with a reaffirmation of the nationalist and nativist undertones that powered his success in the GOP primary.