Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned yesterday under fire over pro-Kremlin ties and after being sidelined in a reshuffle as the Republican nominee battles to reverse sinking poll numbers.
The departure of the smooth-talking seasoned strategist, who has advised Republican presidential candidates going back to Gerald Ford, follows weeks of Trump missteps that have flung his White House campaign into crisis.
“(On Friday) morning, Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign,” Trump said in a statement, thanking him for “his great work” and proclaiming him a “true professional”.
Manafort’s exit coincides what supporters call a new era in the Trump campaign following the appointment on Wednesday of a right-wing news executive as CEO and the promotion of a respected pollster to campaign manager.
On Thursday, Trump shocked many by expressing “regret” for the first time for past mistakes and yesterday the campaign began airing its first television ads in a desperate attempt to chip into Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s yawning lead in both national and crucial swing-state polls.
 “The early signs are that, you know, Donald Trump 3.0 is going to work a lot better than it has in the past,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said on MSNBC television.
But the Clinton campaign pounced on Manafort’s resignation in an attempt to fan accusations of nefarious pro-Kremlin influence on the Trump campaign after the outgoing chairman was named in a Ukrainian corruption probe.
“You can get rid of Manafort, but that doesn’t end the odd bromance Trump has with (Russian leader Vladimir) Putin,” said campaign manager Robby Mook.
“Trump still has to answer serious questions hovering over his campaign given his propensity to parrot Putin’s talking points.”
Manafort, who formerly advised Ukrainian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and lobbied for foreign dictators, was initially hired in March to avert a then-feared contested Republican convention – a situation that did not ultimately arise.
It was his first return to top-level Republican politics in 20 years - having been reportedly passed over in 2008 by John McCain, who was allegedly alarmed by his unsavoury lobbying clientele.
But it seems it was an appointment that both Trump and Manafort came to regret.
Manafort sought to turn the brash-talking 70-year-old New York billionaire, who has never previously held elected office, into a figure more palatable to the general electorate as well as build up a traditional campaign structure.
Trump “was not a candidate that could be corralled,” Steele told MSNBC.
“Trying to find that sweet spot where Donald could be Donald, but you can also put together the formal structures and the professional aspects of the campaign was a lot tougher for one person to do,” he said.
A series of controversies, including a protracted row with the Muslim American parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, saw Trump tank disastrously in the polls.
Clinton now leads 47.2% to Trump’s 41.2%, according to an average of national polls from Real Clear Politics, and is ahead in virtually every swing state.
But as the US press published story after story of staff tearing their hair out with their boss’s seeming inability to stay on message, Trump batted aside suggestions that he should change tack.