How Lewandowski finally ran out of lifelines

Corey Lewandowski had fought his way back from the brink of termination at least twice over the past few months, utilizing a no-holds-barred style of infighting seldom seen in presidential politics while relying on the loyalty of a small group of allies and an unusually close relationship with his boss.

But Lewandowski’s survival strategy began to backfire this month. And by the time he was called into one of the executive offices at Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters in Manhattan’s Trump Tower on Monday morning for the final time as campaign manager, the once-obscure GOP operative had run out of lifelines.

He’d grown increasingly reckless in his power struggle, taking on the candidate’s own family and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. He’d already told associates more than once in the past few months that he was on the verge of quitting, and some of his allies had either backed away from him or quit the campaign. So when Lewandowski was informed in a meeting with Trump’s adult children that he was being relieved of his dream job running the first-time candidate’s presidential campaign, the career GOP operative didn’t argue.

Lewandowski emerged from the executive office to find security waiting, and they watched him as he packed up his things, then escorted him out of the building, according to two sources briefed on the encounter.

“He didn’t put up a fight because he is loyal,” said one Lewandowski associate. “The gloves had come off a while ago, and Corey spent a lot of energy fighting, which took away from the campaign.” The source said Lewandowski “was surrounded by enemies. He was outgunned.”

Lewandowski declined to comment for this story. He told CNN he was “proud to have been a small part” of Trump’s campaign but didn’t know why he was fired. “Things change as the campaign evolves,” he said, denying his dismissal had anything to do with tensions with Trump’s family.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump stood by the decision. He praised Lewandowski as “a good guy” and “a friend of mine” who “did a great job,” but he said “it’s time now for a different kind of a campaign.”

The Trump campaign would not say whether Trump was in the room for the firing. It denied that Lewandowski’s relationship with the candidate’s family had anything to do with his termination, though the family members with whom sources say he clashed most — Trump’s influential daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner — did not respond to requests for comment. The RNC also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But interviews with about two dozen sources, including Trump family friends and people who work in and around the campaign, traced Lewandowski’s firing to longstanding issues brought to the fore this month, as Trump struggled to pivot to a general election campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton amid increasing campaign dysfunction and declining poll numbers.

The mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, led to intensifying calls from influential Republicans — including Priebus — for Trump to moderate his inflammatory rhetoric, according to campaign sources. They said that Lewandowski’s critics — chief among them campaign chairman Paul Manafort — responded by arguing that Lewandowski was actually encouraging Trump’s propensity to offend.

Priebus also told campaign officials that Lewandowski had become a significant impediment to ironing out tensions between the RNC and the campaign, according to two sources familiar with the interaction. One said Priebus ticked off a number of areas in which Lewandowski “had been a roadblock.” The source said that Priebus' criticism “undercut and hurt the campaign,” which is more reliant on the national party for basic campaign infrastructure than that of any recent nominee.

And Lewandowski’s critics also pinned the blame on him for unflattering media coverage of Kushner’s growing behind-the-scenes role in the campaign, according to three sources familiar with internal campaign dynamics. This month, for instance, The Associated Press profiled Kushner, citing people inside the campaign griping about his inexperience and noting his father’s convictions for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and witness intimidation.

The perception inside Trump’s inner circle was that “Corey was trying to isolate Trump and cut him off from even Ivanka and Jared,” said a longtime Trump business associate who speaks to the family and its representatives regularly. “That was overstepping his bounds.”

Ivanka Trump, who for months had expressed misgivings about Lewandowski’s temperament and qualifications for the job, last week grew increasingly resolute in her calls for his termination, according to several people in and around the campaign and the family. One person close to the campaign said it got “to the point where she was going to distance herself from the campaign if Corey didn’t go.”

By early last week, erstwhile Trump adviser Roger Stone, a Manafort ally who had pushed for months for Lewandowski’s ouster, was gleefully telling associates that a coup was imminent.

In some ways, Lewandowski’s story is the story of the Trump campaign.

The scrappy 42-year-old from the hardscrabble mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, didn’t have any presidential campaign experience when he was plucked from relative obscurity to run Trump’s presidential campaign prior to its June 2015 launch. At the time, the billionaire real estate showman was regarded by the political establishment as a sideshow with little chance of making an impact in the race, let alone winning the nomination.

Lewandowski quickly built a strong rapport with Trump by treating him with absolute reverence, unfailingly referring to him as “Mr. Trump” or “Sir” — even when Trump wasn’t around — and encouraging him to act on his bombastic instincts. Lewandowski also reassured the sometimes tightfisted billionaire, who initially pledged to self-fund his campaign, that it wasn’t necessary to invest serious money in the traditional tools of presidential campaigning, such as polling, voter files, analytics and major advertising campaigns. Instead, Lewandowski’s approach was to hire a tiny staff composed mostly of allies from his past jobs and to “let Trump be Trump.”

The result was impressive: billions of dollars’ worth of free publicity generated by Trump’s confrontational rhetoric at splashy campaign rallies, during television interviews and on social media.

Initially, Trump’s adult children were wary of Lewandowski’s unwillingness to try to temper their father’s rhetoric because they were concerned that it was damaging the family’s brand and corporate partnerships, said the longtime Trump business associate. But as Trump gained traction in the polls and began winning primaries, the Trump children realized that their father actually had a chance to win and questioned whether Lewandowski was “helping take their father to the next level, because he is not getting the type of advice he needs to temper his worst impulses,” said the associate. 

But Trump stuck by Lewandowski, even after he was accused of roughing up a reporter in March, rejecting calls to fire him by explaining "I don't do that. I'm loyal."

By the end of the month, though, Trump had brought on Manafort, a veteran of 40 years' worth of GOP presidential campaigns. The move, which multiple sources said came at the behest of Trump’s adult children, seemed a tacit acknowledgment of the limitations of Lewandowski’s approach.

Manafort brought in a cadre of associates from his days as a power lobbyist, dividing the campaign into two rival camps loyal to Manafort and Lewandowski.

The camps dispensed sometimes contradictory orders to campaign staff and provided conflicting advice to Trump. Manafort urged more spending on advertising and hiring, while Lewandowski pushed back, vetoing at least two proposed Manafort hires.

In an April meeting at Trump Tower, Trump deputized Manafort to reorganize the campaign and to take the reins, as first reported by POLITICO. A top Lewandowski ally on the campaign named Stuart Jolly immediately tendered his resignation. Lewandowski went home to his family in New Hampshire and privately told associates he intended to quit imminently as well, but Trump personally asked him to return, according to two campaign sources.

When he reappeared at Trump Tower, the infighting intensified to a degree unusual even in the alpha-dominated world of presidential politics, according to a handful of campaign insiders. They describe a campaign in which the senior officials and their allies spent as much or more time waging internecine warfare as they did on campaign strategy.

Manafort’s allies circulated rumors about Lewandowski’s personal life and had a hand in planting a suggestive item about his emotional argument with a campaign staffer in a New York tabloid, according to a person with direct knowledge of how the item came to be.

Lewandowski’s supporters, in turn, have urged Trump and his representatives to examine Manafort’s personal life as well as the lobbying done by Manafort and his associates for controversial clients around the world, according to people on both sides of the Lewandowski-Manafort rift. And according to two campaign sources, Lewandowski highlighted for Trump instances in which Manafort had been quoted telling ostensibly private audiences that the candidate intended to tone down his rhetoric in the general election. Those reports deeply bothered Trump, who prided himself on rejecting political norms dictating that candidates speak from a script and avoid making provocative remarks.

Manafort didn't respond to a request for comment.

Late last month, Lewandowski successfully pushed Trump to fire one of Manafort’s first major hires, political director Rick Wiley. And he jealously guarded his access to the candidate, making sure that either he or an ally — usually communications director Hope Hicks — were at Trump’s side at all times. On plane rides, Lewandowski and Hicks would trade off Trump-watch duties, taking turns sitting next to him when one or the other needed to go to the bathroom, according to a source who witnessed the arrangement.

But in recent days, Trump has increasingly seemed to come to grips with the need to expand his campaign and tone down his rhetoric, telling donors at a private fundraiser in Arizona on Saturday that he was preparing to pivot to the general election, according to a donor who was present.

Lewandowski accompanied Trump to the fundraiser, at the Goldwater House, where he was seen pacing back and forth with anxious energy, which is not at all unusual for the Red Bull-chugging operative.

In fact, the decision seems to have surprised Lewandowski and his allies in and around the campaign.

One campaign official said that during a Sunday morning conversation about campaign strategy with Lewandowski, the erstwhile campaign manager gave no indication anything was amiss. It was “a good chat,” the official said.

Eli Stokols contributed to this report.