Smart political minds will argue whether the departure of Corey Lewandowski represents genuine good news for the Trump campaign. Yes, some of the campaign’s problems fall on his shoulders: the minimal campaign apparatus, the inconsistent-at-best fundraising, the sense that we’re watching a giant road show of performance art instead of a fine-tuned get-out-the-vote machine ready to hit all cylinders in every key state.
This anecdote is not reassuring:
According to two sources briefed on the events, the meeting was a setup. Shortly after it began, the children peppered Lewandowski with questions, asking him to explain the campaign’s lack of infrastructure. “They went through the punch list. ‘Where are we with staffing? Where are we with getting the infrastructure built?’” one source explained. Their father grew visibly upset as he heard the list of failures. Finally, he turned to Lewandowski and said, “What’s your plan here?”
Lewandowski responded that he wanted to leak Trump’s vice-president pick.
On the other hand, Lewandowski didn’t make Donald Trump spend several days denouncing a judge from Indiana as “the Mexican,” or accuse troops of stealing from Iraq, or suggest he’s going to try to persuade the NRA to change its position on the terror watch list and gun purchases. Perhaps Lewandowski, as campaign manager, indulged the “let Trump be Trump” mentality too much, and needed to be the figure next to Trump trying to save him from his worst impulses. But can anyone do that, besides Trump himself?
This afternoon, the Trump team got a little smaller:
Michael Caputo, a Trump adviser and head of the communications for Trump’s caucus operations team, tweeted “Ding Dong the witch is dead” following the news that Lewandowski had been fired.
“I regret sending out a tweet today alluding to the firing of Corey Lewandowski. In hindsight, that was too exuberant a reaction to this personnel move. I know this is a distraction from the kind of campaign you want to run, so I’m resigning my position as director of communications for caucus operations at the 2016 Republican Convention. Let’s make this immediate,” Caputo wrote in a letter to campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, according to a copy obtained by CNN.
Wait, now the Trump campaign is all about mutual respect, decorum and good manners? Thinking back to an old Dennis Miller joke, this is like getting thrown out of Guns & Roses for missing a Bible study meeting.