Corey Lewandowski, Bully by IAN TUTTLE
April 8, 2016 5:09 PM
In case there was any doubt that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is deserving of America’s opprobrium, reporter Patricia Murphy offers further evidence in her chronicle, up today at the Daily Beast, of Lewandowski’s time heading up Americans for Prosperity’s outfit in New Hampshire:
Lewandowski was AFP’s New Hampshire state director when he took over Ohio state operations for the Koch-backed advocacy operation in the summer of 2012. Several former AFP employees who worked with Lewandowski at that time describe him as a bully and said they were “flabbergasted” to learn that Lewandowski had gone from AFP to overseeing a presidential campaign.
“He was just a condescending, nasty brutish boor,” said Pat Maloney, an Ohio regional field director for AFP when Lewandowski took the reins. “In a position of real power, he would make H.R. Haldeman in the Nixon administration look like a Boy Scout.” . . .
When Maloney missed a conference call to attend to his ill grandmother, Lewandowski called him at his grandmother’s bedside. “My grandmother is literally dying, having Last Rites administered and I get a call from Corey chewing me out, asking who the hell did I think I was missing this conference call,” he said.”
Apparently, Lewandowski is rigorous about conference-call discipline:
Lisa Bast, another Ohio regional field director at the time, said Lewandowski once threatened to “come really down hard” on her if she didn’t get 50 people to attend an AFP event in Akron.
After she missed a 7 a.m. conference call to prepare for the event, her phone rang.
“Corey gets on the phone and defames my character. He called me incompetent, called me a loser,” Bast said. “He called me a f**king b**ch, yelling, ‘I am going to fire your f**king ass!’”
It’s not the only time Lewandowski laid into a female employee, apparently. Politico reported last month:
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**t” 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.
Politico added this charming tidbit, too:
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.)
It seems Lewandowski’s gone from threatening violence to participating in it. Last month, he took it upon himself to manhandle a protester at a Trump rally. And last week, Lewandowski was charged in Jupiter, Fla., with simple battery for grabbing ex-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a Trump event in early March. About that incident, Murphy adds:
None of the drama in Lewandowski’s current job, including the battery charges, surprises many of the people who worked with him in the past.
“Typical Corey,” said a former AFP employee, who asked not to be named. “It didn’t surprise me. That’s not atypical at all.”
Thuggery, misogyny, mendacity. Sound like anyone else in the Trump campaign?
Read more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433873/corey-lewandowski-bully-daily-beast
