Corey Lewandowski once falsely tried to claim he'd fired a staffer for being a 'chronic masturbator'


When Corey Lewandowski was hired to be Donald Trump's campaign manager in 2015, it was under the mistaken belief that Trump's team was poaching top talent from the Koch brothers. In fact, Lewandowski had not had a successful stint at the Koch-connected Americans for Prosperity; one rumor explained the soured relations had to do with Lewandowski "threatening to 'blow up' the car of AFP's chief financial officer because of a late reimbursement check," GQ writes.
But while Lewandowski did not have the traditional résumé to run a campaign of Trump's size, he stumbled on successes in the form of letting Trump be Trump. He was ultimately suspicious and paranoid of those around him, though; by the time Lewandowski was ousted from his managerial role with the campaign, he had already fired a staffer for the apparent offense of talking to Paul Manafort, whom Lewandowski worried was gaining favor.
Lewandowski tried to cover the scandal up by saying the staffer was actually a "chronic masturbator." GQ explains:
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[Lewandowski's] primary obsession was Paul Manafort, whom Trump had brought on in March 2016 to help with convention strategy. In April, Lewandowski sacked a mid-level staffer for disobeying his order to not communicate with Manafort. When that staffer's firing — and the reason for it — merited a brief mention deep in a Politico story on Trump campaign infighting, Lewandowski demanded a correction, claiming he'd terminated the aide not because of anything to do with Manafort but because the aide was a chronic masturbator. Lewandowski went so far as to email multiple reporters "a partial statement" that he said he'd extracted from another campaign worker (whom he refused to identify) about the fired aide's alleged deviancy. [GQ]
"Corey could have salvaged a pretty decent role for himself on the campaign," one Trump campaign adviser told GQ, "had he not spent all his time trying to put the screws to everybody else." Read more about Lewandowski's unexpected rise — and fall, and rise again — at GQ.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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