Donald Trump expanded his circle of senior campaign advisers to include five new operatives on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.
The move comes as he attempts to reset the race and find effective attack lines against Kamala Harris with roughly 80 days until the 2024 election.
The former president moved over Taylor Budowich, Alex Pfeiffer and Alex Bruesewitz from the Trump-aligned Maga Inc political action committee, as well as previous Trump campaign veterans Corey Lewandowski and Tim Murtaugh.
The new additions are coming onto the Trump campaign as senior advisers, meaning they are lateral hires to a campaign still being run by co-campaign chiefs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the people said.
Lewandowski previously ran the 2016 campaign but does not have the same role again. He has remained an informal adviser to Trump since the first presidential campaign, and will continue that function but in a more formal capacity through the final stretch to November, one of the people said.
Murtaugh, who was the communications director for the 2020 campaign, is returning in a broader role, as will Budowich, Pfeiffer and Bruesewitz, one of the people said. Bruesewitz has a large online following and is expected to help direct social outreach.
The additions came after senior aides on the Trump campaign found themselves open to criticism and challenges to their positions after perhaps the rockiest stretch for the campaign since it launched in 2022, the Guardian has previously reported.
The summer months have historically been the time that Trump makes changes to his campaign chiefs, as he did in 2016 when he installed Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and David Bossie to take the reins, as well as in 2020, when he replaced Brad Parscale with Bill Stepien.
The past month has been bad enough for the Trump campaign that advisers have taken those challenges – whether from enemies real or perceived – as serious threats or slights that necessitate devoting time and effort to slap down.
