Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has been exiled to New Hampshire after parachuting onto this year’s campaign in August and suggesting to people he was plotting a coup, according to a report in The Guardian.
After the abrasive Lewandowski returned to the Trump orbit as an unpaid senior adviser, he told people he had been brought back to “run the campaign,” sources told the newspaper. That was false, those sources said, noting Trump merely asked people to find “something for Corey to do.”
In addition to playing palace intrigue against Trump campaign chiefs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, Lewandowski also began a clandestine audit of the campaign’s finances because of his misgivings about LaCivita, The Guardian reported.
“Corey was trying to Kamikaze into Chris,” one Trump ally told the paper.
What Trump’s tenacious, temperamental pal forgot is that no one in the building was especially keen on him. The Guardian noted that much of the Trump campaign team was hired by Wiles and LaCivita and has been working with them for two years. Without any allies, his ambitions for reclaiming his MAGA throne fell flat.
The newly humbled Lewandowski has now been instructed to stay out of the campaign’s way and focus on his surrogate duties, as well as New Hampshire, the New England state with four electoral votes where Lewandowski has a home and has been involved in local politics.
The state hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential election since 2000, when it was carried by George W. Bush, but Trump narrowly lost by 0.3 percentage points in 2016.
Recent polls have put Vice President Kamala Harris comfortably ahead in the state.
“I’m proud to volunteer my time to do everything possible to help Donald J. Trump win this election and Make America Great Again,” Lewandowski told The Guardian.
Lewandowski was already batting with two strikes: He was fired before Election Day in 2016 after clashes with Trump’s family and then was fired from a pro-Trump super PAC in 2021 over allegations he made unsolicited sexual advances toward a female donor.
And yet, despite his exile and repeated screwups, his old boss seems to maintain a soft spot for him.
The Guardian said Lewandowski traveled on Trump’s private plane to his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, this past weekend.
“He’s Trump’s comfort blanket,” another Trump ally told the newspaper. “And he’s like a cockroach. He never dies.”
