http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/corey-lewandowski-donald-trump-222464Campaign manager: 'Trump will never change'
By Nolan D. McCaskill
04/26/16 04:49 PM EDT
Donald Trump will never change, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Tuesday.
POLITICO reported strife within the Trump campaign as the reality TV star rejected convention manager Paul Manafort’s assertion to Republican National Committee members last week that his new boss was “projecting an image” for voters but would tone down his rhetoric. But Lewandowski, appearing on CNN, pushed back on that idea.
“Donald Trump will never change,” he said. “The motto of the campaign has been and continues to be: Let Mr. Trump be Mr. Trump.”
In leaked audio from his presentation to the RNC, Manafort suggested Trump would evolve from being the candidate who spews bombastic rhetoric on the trail.
“That’s what’s important for you to understand: That he gets it, and that the part he’s been playing is evolving,” he said. “The negatives are going to come down, the image is going to change, but Clinton is still going to be 'Crooked Hillary.'"
But Lewandowski insisted that not only will Trump be who he is, but that his message is consistent, though his delivery may change with his audience.
“Mr. Trump, when he goes to an event, he speaks to these massive crowds and he wants to make sure that they understand what his message is,” Lewandowski said. “And so his messaging in those large crowds is sometimes more tailor-made to that large crowd. And in a small audience, as you would anybody else, you have a different way that you speak to people in a smaller crowd.”
That, Lewandowski argued, was the message Manafort intended to convey.
“So what you'll see tomorrow from Mr. Trump is a detailed foreign policy speech in Washington and then we'll go out to Indiana and we’ll have a massive rally, which coach Bobby Knight is going to be joining us for. And it’s gonna be, you know, a massive, raucous crowd,” he continued. “Again, what Paul is talking about is in those smaller meetings, when Donald Trump is one-on-one with someone, he may not be having the same type of loud, verbose conversation because it’s a more private, intimate setting, but the message is the same.”
