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Why Trump Loves Lewandowski
Donald Trump with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
In a year of floors falling away under one’s feet (such as the assumption that nearly all Americans demand a minimal level of civility in public life), the Corey Lewandowski story represents one more gob smack. That Donald Trump stands by the belligerent Lewandowski tells us more of what we already knew about Trump, and also hints at the coward beneath the blowhard.
First, the battery. The campaign manager – not a volunteer, not even a hired security guard – but the honest-to-goodness campaign manager, nearly shoved reporter Michelle Fields to the ground and inflicted bruises on her arm. When she protested, there was no apology. Instead, the campaign at first suggested that there was a mistake: Lewandowski mistook Fields (who worked at the time for the pro-Trump Breitbart.com) for a member of the mainstream media. Oh, so that makes shoving okay? But the campaign quickly reverted to outright lies. Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokesman, said that Fields’ account was “entirely false…. I did not witness any encounter … not a single camera or reporter of more than 100 in attendance captured the alleged incident.” Trump himself offered that “maybe she made it up.”
Except there was an eyewitness, Ben Terris, of the Washington Post, who confirmed Fields’ account that very day. And the following day there was an audio recording of the Terris/Field conversation immediately after the incident, which further confirmed her account. And then there were videos, one of which was enough to convince the police to bring battery charges.
Never mind. In the morality-free Trump zone, facts are optional. “You are totally delusional,” Lewandowski said of Fields. “I never touched you. As a matter of fact, I have never even met you.” Trumpkins disdain eyewitnesses, audio recordings, and videotape. You have your truth, as our friends on the left would say, and I have mine. Not even Bill Clinton was so brazen.
So the battery is an established fact shamelessly denied. And then there is the character assassination. Trump has suggested that Fields was an attention seeker, and sneered that she’s “not a baby, okay?” This is classic Trump – attacking those he has already wronged. Asked in an early debate about the people left holding the bag after his four bankruptcies, he dismissed them, saying they were “big boys and girls.” Actually, many were electricians, carpenters, and other working people who couldn’t afford his fancy lawyers.
Any number of Trump-enabling commentators have advised Michelle Fields to get over it, put on her “big boy pants,” and otherwise to suck it up.
Really? What about the big boy who’s running for president? Why is he so scared? Perhaps Trump’s fondness for Lewandowski is not in spite of his henchman’s willingness to get physical but because of it.
Trump seems more than usually frightened of protesters. To be sure, every candidate gets serious threats, and doubtless Trump has received some. But his threshold for feeling vulnerable seems unusually low. Before a rally in Iowa, he was told that some protesters might throw tomatoes at him. He was sufficiently alarmed to tell the crowd: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them.” For tomatoes. Nor has he been shy about calling down violence even on those who merely attempted to disrupt his speeches (which, I hasten to add, they have no right to do), but which in no way justifies mob violence.
On another occasion, Lewandowski waded into the crowd and grabbed a protester by the collar. Trump approved of this maneuver too, explaining (if that’s the right word) to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the man’s sign contained very bad words. Non sequitur.
The Trump campaign has changed its story several times about Michelle Fields. The latest, on CNN Tuesday night, featured Trump justifying Lewandowki’s manhandling of Fields because she approached the TV star armed with a pen “which is very dangerous.” Tomatoes, Bics, is there no end to the threats against Trump?
Donald Trump avoided the draft by claiming bone spurs in his heels – which somehow didn’t keep him off the ski slopes. Yet he had the gall to disparage the heroism of John McCain. His only real exposure to danger, his “personal Vietnam” he says, was sleeping around and risking STDs in the 1970s.
Trump is a physically large man with the courage of a mouse. Like many cowards, he loves tough talk, but he prefers to issue threats from the comfort of his private jet and to let bullyboys like Lewandowski actually get their hands dirty. Purely as a matter of national hygiene, Lewandowski should be fired. But more importantly, so should his boss.
Published in General
Not really, Ryan. In both cases an act is presumed to be a crime before any final legal determination that it is a crime. I’m sure the BLM crowd was (and is) just a certain that Zimmerman’s actions met the legal definition of murder as are you and Mona that Lewandowski’s actions met the legal definition of battery. The BLM certainty has been tested in a court of law and found wanting. In fairness, you and Mona should wait to see if a court finds your certainty similarly wanting.
Basil and I are trying, oh are we trying, to make a distinction here. A legal distinction, and ironically it’s the lawyers who can’t seem to understand.
Asking you if Zimmerman is a murderer, we are asking if Zimmerman is guilty of the crime of “murder”. He has not been found guilty of that crime, right? Therefore, no matter what anyone says, he is not a murderer. Moreover, I would expect that if some publication called him a “murderer”, he could sue for defamation libel or slander of some sort, because that is untrue. No one is disputing that he killed Trayvon Martin. Now, jaywalking is against the law in many cities. I’m sure you and everyone reading this has “jaywalked” many times. But a publication calling you, Ryan M, a jaywalker, would risk being sued if you actually weren’t ever convicted of jaywalking. Even if you were charged with the offense and somehow had the ticket dismissed for any reason, you would still have standing to sue this publication.
I believe it is important to distinguish between crimes and other regular social interactions. Crossing the street against a light, bumping into someone in Florida (which seems to qualify as battery) or killing someone in self defense, if not prosecuted and convicted, are not crimes of jaywalking, theft, or murder.
The reason for this is, well, we are all criminals if we go by your definitions. We are all criminals who have escaped getting caught, and if we were caught and somehow “got off”. This kind of mentality leads to totalitarianism faster than you can say Donald Trump is a fascist coward and generally bad man who never should be President
Are there people who committed heinous crimes and beat the system? Of course. Are there people who didn’t commit crimes but were convicted anyway? Yes. Scooter Libby comes to mind.
Going back to the original point. Mona Charen using the word “battery” – a word not used as a descriptor but a word that is a criminal charge – one should use the term “alleged”. That’s all I said.
My accusation about this piece was that it is unhinged and emotionally off-balance. Charen has her opinions, Trump is a coward, etc. all fine. But when she enters into the legal realm she is out of line, and I’m pointing that out.
But this side dispute is even more important. It’s not trivial. And I’m surprised at some here who can’t understand this simple concept.
Your problem is that Mona didn’t say or insinuate that she was using the term battery in a legal sense. You claim that is how she is using it, but nothing in her OP suggests it.
Yes I wrote that in the comment section here. If I were to argue as so many here do (just to show you how maddening some can be) I would say. Oh, you support Hillary? You don’t think she’s a criminal and a bigot, blah, blah and then proceed to double down with blah, blah, blah.
But I’ll address your point. It was in the comment section and I am an anonymous poster. If I wrote that as a post, I guarantee you it would not make it to the Main Feed here because it might be actionable against Ricochet.
continued
So this was only quasi-public. It may have been on the Member Feed which would make it even more obscure. Truth be told, I would not write that in a post, even knowing it wouldn’t be promoted. I would have taken out the word “criminal” regarding my argument here, it’s unfortunately not true (yet?). It hasn’t, unfortunately again, been proven that Clinton was negligent on Benghazi so that too would never appear in print unless one wanted a lawsuit. It was a comment made in some anger with those who would vote for Hillary over Trump.
But I’m not a nationally syndicated columnist making money publishing on cross platforms for decades, am I? I think those who do that should have some slightly higher level of journalistic integrity than someone commenting using his dog as his avatar.
Bigot, Alynskyite etc. aren’t crimes and therefore one can say those things without care, as Charen can call Trump a “coward” and such.
The Main Feed here has rarely, if ever, attacked a Democrat with the vitriol and bile exhibited here regarding Trump. That tells me a lot.
So, I obviously don’t want to come across as defending the BLM crowd. :)
But I do think there are some clear distinctions. Mona has used a word, and though I’ve indicated that the word has turned into a red herring for Trump defenders, this thread is exactly the sort of place to play with red herrings, right? It’s part of what makes Ricochet so fun. So we may as well deal with it.
I’d draw the distinction in this manner. Mona is making a broader point about the behavior of an individual (on multiple occasions), and the behavior of his employer. She didn’t simply take this isolated incident, refer to it as a battery, and call for blood on the basis of his having committed a crime. Rather, she made an appeal for the sort of civility that has been lacking from Trump, and she used this incident (which she describes as battery) as one of many examples to illustrate that point. I think if it was a crime or if it was not a crime would be wholly irrelevant to her point. Now, you can accuse Mona of being clumsy, and of distracting from the point; that’s fair enough. But she was also very clear in what she was calling for.
If you remove this particular incident from her post, or if you refer to it as an “act of rudeness,” or some such thing, rather than a battery, you do not really detract from her point, and that is important. The BLM crowd was calling for a legal consequence to occur, and yes, that would be inappropriate in lieu of a legally arrived at judgement. If Mona said that the man should be officially disqualified by virtue of having committed a crime, that would require a judge’s verdict… if she called for jail, that would also require a verdict.
But she’s not. What she’s calling for is for is a serious assessment of the man’s character and fitness for office, based on a lot of criteria, and allowing for individual judgment on the severity of any of her examples. In that sense, what Mona is doing really is in no way comparable to the BLM movement. I think it is somewhat unfair for us to hold her to a standard that goes way beyond what she’s asking us to do.
Ok, Franco, see if my last comment answers your question.
As for this one, I think you’re a little confused about what does and does not constitute slander. A publication is free to refer to me as a jaywalker even if I’m not convicted of jaywalking. Same publication is also free to refer to me as an adulturer or anything else, absent a court’s ruling on those issues. With slander, truth is a defense. That truth need not be litigated in a criminal court. I don’t think that Zimmerman or OJ could sue for people referring to them as murderers, even though they were acquitted.
But this conversation seems to be veering down a rabbit trail. In the OP, Mona did not call for criminal consequences. She merely described an incident as “battery.” There is nothing to say that legal terms-of-art cannot be used unless authorized by a judge. You can say that it goes to her credibility, and that is fine. But I think you’re making a much bigger issue of it than is necessary.
What, exactly, does it tell you?
I’ve never attacked a democrat with the vitriol and bile that I’ve had for Trump. I’ve never despised a democrat in the way that I despise Trump.
Frankly, that should tell you a lot more about Trump than it tells you about me. You already know about me. You can reference some 60 hours of spoken word and some 300 posts on Ricochet to form an in-depth opinion regarding my conservatism. So what does it tell you when I so despise a person like Trump? How about Mona? Has she not also given us a pretty good view of her conservatism?
Do you not expect that people would reserve more anger for the wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the middle of the pack, than they have for the wolf at the gate?
Where an individual has been charged with but not convicted of a crime, are you really saying that professional commentators are under no obligation to use the term “alleged” when discussing the charge?
And, Franco, it isn’t just Ryan. Or just me. At least half the Republican Party despises Trump. Sure, a few Republicans stayed home in 2012 or 2008, but you never saw a #neverMitt or #neverMcCain movement sweep though the Party like what you are seeing now. You never saw the National Review devote an entire issue to condemning any other Republican candidate. You never saw the most recent Presidential candidate of the Party come out with an emphatic condemnation of the current frontrunner. You’ve never seen any party reject its own frontrunner in such numbers or with such fury.
Sure, maybe we’re all crazy and you’re the only one seeing things clearly. That could be. But I really, really, really doubt it.
I quoted one of your posts, not a comment, in which you called Hillary a “serial lawbreaker.” If your argument is that that’s different from what Mona did because you did so anonymously, or because it was on the member feed, or because you are not a paid columnist, I think you’ve lost the argument. You both are stating opinions.
And that’s the distinction that matters. Mona isn’t reporting news; she’s opining. Columnists can (and frequently do) state that “Hillary is a felon.” Reporters must qualify by adding the word alleged (or some such).
If Hillary, say, is eventually charged with the criminal offense of perjury, I would hope both reputable columnists and reporters would wait until her conviction before referring to her as guilty of perjury. Until conviction, the perjury is still an allegation. Like the criminal offense of battery is just an allegation until the individual charged is convicted of it.
If you like. But arguing that columnists should adopt the standards of straight news reporters doesn’t change the fact that it’s standard practice to simply say OJ got away with murder, ObamaCare is unconstitutional, or Hillary is a felon.
But this is all a side show. The real reason Mona is being criticized for not saying allegedly is because some don’t like her opinion. It’s a silly distraction, which you are free to indulge in further without me. :)
Actually, I agree with much of what Mona wrote about Trump and Lewandowski. But there are standards of fairness for political commentators which Mona violated in her screed when it came to the commission of the criminal offense of battery. I’m sorry you view this ethical distinction as a side show.
Apology accepted.
I thought you were going away.
Is Ms. Fields out of intensive care yet?
Nope. Just not going down that particular rabbit hole any further.