Trump axes controversial campaign manager Lewandowski
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski talked to a member of the media on April 3 at Nathan Hale High School in West Allis, Wis. Lewandowski is leaving the campaign, following a tumultuous stretch marked by missteps and infighting.
NEW YORK » Donald Trump abruptly fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski today in a dramatic shake-up designed to calm panicked Republican leaders and end an internal power struggle plaguing the billionaire businessman’s unconventional White House bid.
In dismissing his longtime campaign chief — just a month before the party’s national convention — Trump signaled, at least for a day, a departure from the seat-of-the-pants style that has fueled his unlikely rise in Republican politics. Perhaps more than anyone else in Trump’s inner circle, the ousted aide has preached a simple mantra: “Let Trump be Trump.”
“I have no regrets,” Lewandowski told CNN just hours after he was escorted out of Trump’s Manhattan campaign headquarters. Still, the former conservative activist seemed to acknowledge the limitations of his approach, which has sparked widespread concern among the GOP’s top donors, operatives, elected officials, and even some of Trump’s family members.
“The campaign needs to continue to grow to be successful,” he said.
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, described Lewandowski as a “good man” who helped “a small, beautiful, well-unified campaign” during the primary season.
“I think it’s time now for a different kind of a campaign,” Trump said on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”
People close to Trump, including adult children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr., had long-simmering concerns about Lewandowski, who had limited experience on the national scale before becoming Trump’s campaign leader. Like many Republican officials, Trump’s family urged the billionaire businessman to professionalize a bare-bones campaign that had previously resisted adding staff and paid advertising heading into the general election.
A person close to Trump said Lewandowski was forced out largely because of the campaign’s worsening relationship with the Republican National Committee, donors and GOP officials, who have increasingly criticized the candidate’s message and campaign infrastructure in recent weeks. That person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.
While Trump dismissed his critics publicly, he has been privately concerned that so many party leaders — House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell among them — have been reluctant to support him, the person said. Trump at least partially blamed Lewandowski.
Yet in his response Monday evening, Trump left little indication that he was prepared to abandon his divisive rhetoric.
He repeatedly called Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” in the Fox interview. He also said “facts” suggest President Barack Obama sympathizes with Muslim terrorists.
“Firing your campaign manager in June is never a good thing,” said veteran Republican operative Kevin Madden. “The campaign will have to show dramatic changes immediately on everything from fundraising and organizing to candidate performance and discipline in order to demonstrate there’s been a course correction. Otherwise it’s just cosmetics.”
Lewandowski’s chief internal rival, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, largely inherits the campaign reins. The political veteran has long advocated a more scripted approach backed by a larger and more professional campaign apparatus, although Trump has shown little willingness to embrace a wholesale change in his approach.
Lewandowski, speaking to The Associated Press, noted that Manafort actually has been in charge of major campaign functions, including media strategy and Washington outreach, for months.
“Paul Manafort has been in operational control of the campaign since April 7. That’s a fact,” Lewandowski said.
Lewandowski has long been a controversial figure in Trump’s campaign, but he benefited from his proximity to the presumptive Republican nominee. Often mistaken for a member of the candidate’s security team, he traveled with Trump on his private plane to nearly every campaign stop.
His aggressive approach produced internal enemies.
Just minutes after his departure was announced, Trump adviser Michael Caputo tweeted, “Ding dong the witch is dead!” and included a link to the song from the film, “The Wizard of Oz.”
A few hours later, Caputo was gone, too. The aide was to have served as Trump’s director of communications at next month’s convention, but Hicks confirmed late in the day that he was no longer with the campaign.
The public airing of internal campaign turmoil comes as Democrats rally behind their presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state has already assembled a national campaign with hundreds of paid staffers backed by millions of dollars in battleground-state television advertising. Trump has roughly 30 paid employees working in key states and isn’t spending anything so far on television advertising.
The shakeup came a day before Trump was to attend a major New York City fundraiser, organized by longtime GOP financier Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets.
Fundraisers have encountered turbulence between worried donors and a campaign manager who did not seem fully onboard with the idea that Trump and the party needed to buckle down and raise the money needed to build a robust general election operation.
Trump publicly backed Lewandowski last spring when he was charged with misdemeanor battery after an altercation involving a female reporter during a campaign rally. The charges were later dropped.
Yet, under the weight of dismal poll numbers, many of Trump’s supporters recognized a need to make a change.
“It’s got to become much more disciplined and much more focused and much more organized and have a bigger structure,” said Stephen Stepanek, Trump’s New Hampshire co-chair. “I think the campaign, for lack of a better word, outgrew Corey.”
65 responses to “Trump axes controversial campaign manager Lewandowski”
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This is Mr. Trump carrying out his version of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. In political parlance, this is called “going down in flames.”
“I love the poorly educated!” Go Trump!
Yep, the final straw was probably the tweet from his account the other day with a graphic of him being being behind in the polls and saying “Thank You”…
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
He’s down by double digits now in most polls. He’s done.
If he is done, then we are all done
kiragirl – Yes, of course. The end of the United States. Very good analysis.
True. For those that are polling wonks, at about 8-9%, not only is the White House lost, but there is a distinct possibility that they will lose the House. That means Rs will totally lose congress (Rs defending 34 seats in the Senate) and more importantly, Ds will have at least 3 US Supreme Court nominees…….Xmas comes early for the action.
boolakanaka. Yes, Repub could have played it safe and gave Obama’s Supreme court pick a fair chance and most have said he was a fair minded person. Now there is a really good chance the Repubs will again lose the White House after two terms of Obama and possibly losing the majority in Senate and/or House. Trump is definitely the gift that keeps on giving for the Republicans. With Benghazi and the email scandal, Hillary should have been easily defeated but Heil Trump has decimated the Repub party, and left them in shambles.
We’re “done” without a Trump presidency? Wow.
We may seem done, as success by either of these “candidates” doesn’t end well for our nation, yet there is an excellent option. Once Johnson hits 15% poll numbers, his inclusion in future debates is automatic. And sharing a stage with these two dolts will guarantee a meteoric rise in popularity.
Trump’s campaign is unraveling at the seams. Looks like a contested Republican convention. How about Romney and Rubio as the alternative to Trump.
Republicans are in a tough place. Stay with Trump and hope he performs better as a candidate and can quickly recover from past blunders and a lack of an organization, or a brokered convention that denies Trump th nomination he earned during the primaries and caucuses which means Trump goes third party or stays home along with a lot of his supporters.
They created the monster. Let them figure out how to control him.
The good news is that the party is heading for a disaster one way or the other. It can’t happen soon enough.
A two party country is a good thing but they do need to rework their approach and attitude.
Trump seems to be doing his utmost to lessen the momentum towards his quest to the Presidency! Surely at this speed he might as well hand over the baton to Clinton! Infighting and discord within his campaign will hindered instead of helping him.
I don’t know if the problem is the candidate or the campaign. Seems like this dude was a bit volatile, but what are they going to do, hire some dude who will script the candidate?
A bit volatile? A bit?
That is why they developed the teleprompter.
Lincoln never had a teleprompter, yet he knew how dangerous it was to give off the cuff, unprepared remarks.
Republican establishment needs to take Trump on his offer to run as an independent by nominating a centrist candidate like Bob Gates and supporting him to the hilt. If no one gets 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives can then elect the most common sense person. It a one vote per state contest ….50 in total…..based on the map, most states are red(republican) which should translate to a GOP president. Both Trump and Clinton would be nightmares…..what a sorry year so far!!
Mrs. Clinton gets 350 electoral votes at a minimum now, no matter what happens in Cleveland. The Republicans are cooked this time around.
Thanks, Mr. Trump!
Three major polls have Gary Johnson breaking through the 15% barrier, which hopefully will lead to his being included in any future debates. Once that happens, and the bulk of American voters totally frustrated with Hillary and Donald hear how much better he is, his numbers will rise even more. Millenials and Independents are increasingly turning towards the only logical choice out there.
Gary Johnson, a pot smoking Repblican as president? Unlikely.
And your choice then, oh wise one?
“One of the Secretary of State’s duties is to approve weapons sales to foreign countries. During her three years at State, Hillary signed off on $165 billion worth of sales by private commercial arms contractors to Clinton Foundation foreign donors. On top of that was an additional $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation. It also happened that the weapons contractors themselves and companies connected financially to them made substantial donations to the Clinton foundation — and paid whopping speaking fees to Hillary’s husband ex-president Bill, during her years at State.”
Sarge, not sure whom you’re responding to, but your ability to point out the flaws in Hillary doesn’t somehow cancel the flaws in Trump. Please accept the obvious fact that neither is suitable for leadership, and if “smoking pot” is the only fault discoverable in Johnson’s resume, then the right choice should become clear.
A B C Anybody but Cinton Just keeping the ball in play.
Trump said, “In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a 2004 interview. “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn’t be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. …But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we’ve had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/politics/donald-trump-election-democrat/
It’s ironic that Hillary can give millions of assault rifles to our enemies but an American cannot exercise his or her 2nd amendment right to bear arms.
Futile damage control. One ahole fires another ahole. A vote for Trump is a vote for WWIII and a 300 year nuclear winter.
Mr. Trump is about to get a difficult arithmetic lesson in short order. He needs to come up with the math that will allow him to win when about 67% of voters dislike him, and 55% can’t stand him.
He claims to be a math genius (along with being a genius in every other subject + large hands(!)) so maybe he can come with a new formula.
Let me get this straight? He fires the dude who all along said ” let Trump be Trump!” even as the GOP told him to settle down. Now Trump and the GOPs think by becoming a more refined candidate, 65 million voters will say, oh my, now he is someone I can vote for? Yikes, stupid is as stupid does. For the Trump fans who wants him as the “Outsider” candidate, he will look fake and weak, because becoming more electable means becoming more of a traditional type candidate. And for those voters who saw TRump at his worst, it will be very hard to forget all the C$ap that came out of his mouth. If I was Hil, I would continue to release ads reminding voters the REAL Trump. And by the way, people forget that when Hil was Secretary of State, she had the highest approval ratings for any polital figure at that time. The GOP and the Koch brothers are so screwed.
So Trump (“I have all the best people”) has turned his campaign over to Paul Manafort, whose other clients have include some of the world’s worst torturers and corrupt dictators. Manafort was paid $900K/year by Ferdinand Marcos. He worked for dictators in Somalia and Zaire. He currently works for the Viktor Yanukovych, the massively corrupt Ukranian president and Putin ally. He was paid $700K by the Pakistani secret service as part of a false flag effort to divert attention from terrorism. American spy agencies are reported to be deeply concerned because, after (and if) his nomination is confirmed, Trump and his top staff will receive the same daily briefing from the CIA that the President does. The big question is whether Trump’s top adviser, someone who probably can’t get a security clearance, will be present in those meetings. Manafort, who works for countries that are our enemies, are allied with our enemies, or are known to pursue policies that are not in our interest, should not be in the CIA briefings. The agencies responsible for national security are already said to have deep concerns about Trump’s ability to understand the briefings and to keep them secret. Manafort certainly should not be a part of those briefings. That Trump, in spite of his fascination with dictators, would even consider hiring someone like Manafort speaks volumes about the dangers associated with the frightening possibility of a Trump presidency and the kinds of people he would rely on.
Agreed that given his remarkably terrible client list, he would be a real challenge during a security background investigation. He works for dictators and murderers.
We can assume that Manafort gets along with Jim Murphy, Trump’s national political director. Murphy was a partner at a K street lobbying firm that once enthusiastically defended the military junta in Myanmar and its use of rape as a weapon of war. Murphy’s firm attacked reports by the State Department that exposed the systematic rape, torture, and murder of countless ethnic minority women and tried to malign the reputations of the human rights’ groups that worked to protect women and girls from the military rapists.
Who better to get down and dirty against the Clintons. Jungle rules and it should be a good one. Whitewater,futures trading, Clinton Foundation, Benghazi and last but not least the emails. OMG Trump had four bankruptcies and said bla bla in 2004. “Make America Great Again” You gotta believe.
In Trumpville it’s always somebody else’s fault. Can you imagine being the campaign manager for the orange colored loose cannon named Trump?
Second phase of his reality show.
Trump has defied the odds so far; don’t be surprised if he is the next president.
He will make the White House great again.
Only way he makes the White House great again is if they have Slavic escorts available; as this is his preferred route to selecting a martial mate.
Only one of the many ways. I’m sure he won’t invite Monica.
No, he much prefers to pay and women who are not natural English speakers…..
Sarge wake up! You seem to be a intelligent person but it all stops with your support for Donald Duck oops I meant Donald Duck.
I have more respect for him than I do those constantly insulting him. He has just as much right to support a clown as these others have to support their own clown. Unfortunately, when one has absolutely nothing positive they can say about their candidate, all that’s left is to ridicule the opposition’s.
This is n’t a vote from the Reupblican party. Fortunately there are a lot of Hispanics, Muslims and African Americans not to mention women that will not vote for him. So keep dreaming.
Wrightj, fully agree with your post. Now comes the National Campaign for the election of Mr. Trump as President of the United States. Now it’s between Ms Clinton and Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump will make America Great Again.
You haven’t looked at the math. You cannot eliminate Latinos, African Americans and women from your voter ranks and win. It’s impossible.
He’s done. Get used to it.
Also, take into account he is operating 250 million behind the eight ball. For all his self proclaimed wealth, he has alienated much of the R donor community and lags profoundly behind HRC.
Forensic accountants just finished going through his FEC filings and said Mr. Trump has an actual wealth of no more than $165 million. That’s a whole lot of money, but a whole lot less than his lie of $10 billion.
He can’t afford to self finance his campaign. He’s done.
I don’t know why people waste their time bashing Trump. What has he ever done to them. Hillary has done a whole lot of bad for America and she is still at it.
It will be a dark time in America if she gets elected unless you got money to play.
Wake up he is his worst enemy. He is self destructing. All we’re doing is watching the biggest repubplcan cartoon ever.
Michael Caputo, a Trump adviser and head of the communications for Trump’s caucus operations team, tweeted “Ding Dong the witch is dead” following the news that Lewandowski had been fired. Now, Caputo has “resigned.”
Reports are now saying that he was fired by Ivanka, who has wanted him gone since he grabbed a female reporter.
Is a pattern of compulsive lying by a presidential candidate a legitimate concern? Are Mrs. Clinton’s lies about Benghazi and emails part of a longstanding pattern? Are they consequences of her traumatic brain injury, described by her husband as “a terrible concussion that required six months of very serious work to get over”? Or worse, are her lies part of a more significant personality disorder?
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/is_hillary_clinton_a_compulsive_liar.html#ixzz4CAvyYJLa
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Btw, American Thinker, or affectionately known by many others in mainstream media, as American Stinker, is a conservative rag, and not a very good one at that …..
To hear Hillary Clinton tell it, she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest — even though she was already 6 years old when he made his famous ascent.
On a visit to war-torn Bosnia in 1996, she claimed she and her entourage landed under sniper fire and had to run “with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base” — although videos of her arrival show her waltzing serenely across the tarmac, waving to the crowd.
She blamed the 2012 attack on American diplomatic and intelligence-gathering installations in Benghazi on “a disgusting video” when she knew almost from the first moment that it was a jihadist assault that took the lives of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya.
New York Post
She’s going to be the President – probably for eight years. Get used to it.
No way. You are lying again. Trump 2016-2024 You better believe it.
But, Sarge, your lord and savior, Donald Trump, said this, “”In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a 2004 interview. “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.””
Trump claimed that is his real hair and skin tone, and he never paid for sex with Russian escorts–which seem more believable to you?!!
Hillary claimed that is her real hair and skin tone, and she never paid for sex with Russian escorts seems more unbelievable to me. I guess we could ask Monica.
American Thinker? Now you’ve reached the very bottom of your deep barrel.
When Trump wins I will rejoice in the coming of the man who is going to save us from graft and corruption, lies and deceit. It’s a long time to the General. Anything can happen.
And it gets better. Obama will get his library in Kakaako. His friends from Saudi Arabia will erect a tent befitting a Sheik.
Watch the news this guy is self destructing. The democrats don’t have to do anything but to eat popcorn and drink beer and enjoy this hilarious comedy.
Watch Lou Dobbs, he’s the man. If the democrats don’t have to do anything, why are they so worried about Mr Trump? It is entertaining as the so called clown car keeps rolling.