Photo: AP

Last month, Donald Trump fired the head of his data operation and replaced him with an underling with zero (0) years of work experience. Clearly, strategy is really starting to jell and morale is at a high for the Trump campaign, Corey Lewandowski—the campaign manager who was arrested for manhandling a female reporter—explained only semi-believably to Politico.

Trump has predicated the strength of his platform on his ability to hire “the best,” seems to rely on some combination of his imagination and his advisors to routinely fill in the oft-craterous gaps in his knowledge.

So one might be forgiven for assuming he had some grand plan in mind when he fired his data guy and promoted two employees in his stead: Witold Chrabaszcz, a data engineer “with little prior high-level political strategy experience,” and Ashton Adams, a 2015 college graduate.

(According to Adams’ LinkedIn, her previous job experience is comprised of one internship with the company Colgate Palmolive. No word on what clubs she belonged to, or how much dorm pride she had while attending the University of Arkansas at Fayettville, from which she graduated.)

Which is all to say, it doesn’t seem like the Trump campaign has much of a plan here. Reports Politico:

[Matt] Braynard, the former Republican National Committee strategist Trump had hired to run his campaign’s data team, was let go by the campaign a couple weeks ago, multiple sources also told POLITICO.

Neither Braynard nor Lewandowski commented when asked whether Braynard left of his own accord or was fired. Sources say his top lieutenant in the campaign’s data shop, a former RNC data engineer named Witold Chrabaszcz, was elevated at least temporarily to run the team. Chrabaszcz, who goes by “Vito,” declined to comment. While he is regarded as a savvy manipulator of data, he’s largely unknown in the tight-knit world of GOP data strategists. He seldom worked on political strategy at the RNC and mostly interacted with the party’s other data engineers, a group known as the “basement dwellers.”

According to Politico, some of the campaign’s data is currently “inaccessible,” if you can believe it.