imageNEW YORK: Donald Trump shook up his campaign team for a second time in just two months, fending off suggestions that his presidential run is in crisis as polls show Hillary Clinton cruising toward victory.

The Republican White House nominee, who is tanking in swing states, hired a news executive from a virulently anti-Clinton website as his campaign chief executive and promoted a leading Republican strategist to campaign manager.

Stephen Bannon is executive chairman of Breitbart News, and Trump's new manager is leading Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway.

"I am committed to doing whatever it takes to win this election and ultimately become president," the New York billionaire announced.

Critics warned that Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was unlikely to make the populist candidate, who has upended the Republican establishment, any more palatable to moderate voters or any less controversial.

"There is no new Donald Trump. This is it," Clinton told a rally in Ohio.

"He is still the same man who insults Gold Star families, demeans women, mocks people with disabilities and thinks he knows more about ISIS than our generals."

Her campaign's manager accused Bannon of presiding over a website that "peddles divisive, at times racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."

"We absolutely expect with this change for Donald Trump and the campaign as a whole to double down on more hateful, divisive rhetoric, more conspiracy theories, more wild accusations," Robby Mook told reporters.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2016

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