Last week we demonstrated that throughout his career, Trump’s Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski has earned a reputation of being a bully who is quick to slander others, especially women. He tried to bully the ethics congressional committee when his congressman boss was being investigated, he slandered John Sununu as a terrorist sympathizer, he slandered Roger Ailes by telling people the Fox News head was going to help him win the nomination, he threatened Megyn Kelly, and when Cheri Jacobus decided she didn’t want to work for him, he put her through weeks of hell as slandered her on TV and on Twitter. Then of course there’s the Michelle Fields incident.
A report in Tuesday’s Politico adds more to the Lewandowski list of bullying.
Sources familiar with his tenure at Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told Politico that his brutish interpersonal style (especially with women) damaged his effectiveness as a manager.
“Corey was kind of a cowboy, and he was fun,” recalled someone who worked with him at the AFP. “He gave AFP a cool factor that we didn’t have, but there were some cultural problems.”
Lewandowski boasted about threatening to “blow up” the car of the organization’s chief financial officer over a late expense reimbursement check during the 2012 election cycle, according to multiple sources who are familiar with his claim. (Lewandowski in an email denied this account.)
But some of his most fiery clashes came with a female official who ran one of the states under Lewandowski’s control. The relationship ― and patience for Lewandowski within AFP ― reached a tipping point in October 2013. On the sidelines of a meeting of the group’s board in Manhattan, Lewandowski loudly berated the employee for challenging his authority, getting in her personal space and calling her a “c—” in front of a group of AFP employees, including some senior officials, according to three sources who either witnessed the exchange or dealt with its aftermath.
That female employee told multiple associates that she found Lewandowski’s behavior “very demeaning and insulting,” as one put it.
As Lewandowski built Trump’s campaign team, he” developed a reputation for using profanity, controlling access to the candidate and loudly chastising staff who he perceived to be challenging his authority.” In fact, Politico suggests that it was a losing battle with Lewandowski for access to Trump that forced long-time Trump associate Roger Stone to leave the campaign
Early in the primary season a group of “current and former high-ranking members of the campaign” were planning a palace coup. Since Lewandowski was always at Trump’s side, the plan was to deliver letter “outlining their concerns about the campaign manager in an envelope to Trump’s head of security, Keith Schiller, in the days between the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucuses, with instructions to give it to Trump and no one else.” But after Trump wins in South Carolina and Nevada those plans disintegrated as it is hard to change in the middle of a successful run.
Meanwhile, Lewandowski’s temper increasingly has manifested itself in clashes beyond the campaign staff.
Sources tell Politico that Lewandowski unleashed a profanity-laced tirade towards the officials who organized this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference after they insisted that Trump ― like his presidential rivals ― field questions from a journalist of CPAC’s choosing after delivering his speech. The officials refused to yield, and the Trump campaign canceled his appearance entirely, though Lewandowski said the last-minute change of plans had nothing to do with the dispute.
And, separate from the incident with the Breitbart reporter Fields, other reporters who have covered the Trump campaign described instances in which Lewandowski was rough with journalists, using his body to push reporters away from the candidate. They described the former New Hampshire police officer as occasionally acting more like a security guard than a political operative.
Lewandowski denied those charges in an email to Politico.
While those incidents had not been revealed before now, Lewandowski and his campaign have been publicly called out by the media and rivals for trying to intimidate journalists and flouting accepted terms of engagement between campaigns and the press.
And of course there is the Michelle Fields case where he grabbed a female reporter’s arm and left bruises.
Like his boss Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is a bully, whose favorite target is women. Between Trump and Lewandowski’s lousy records with women (see video below) if “The Donald” secures the GOP nomination I doubt highly that he will generate more than 40% of the female vote, securing a Hillary Clinton victory so huge (yuge) that people will forget the Nixon romp of George McGovern in 1972.
