“This is no knock on Corey, who I thought handled his firing with class”, Kurtz said, noting Lewandowski is bound by a nondisclosure agreement and has only offered warm remarks about Trump since his firing.
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“I don’t know”, he answered. That’s not going to change. “I’ll tell you exactly like it is, whether you like it or not”.
“If I can do that from inside the campaign, that’s a privilege”, he said.
Lewandowski was sacked from the Trump campaign on Monday, for reasons that are not totally clear, but he had quickly secured a position with CNN on Thursday.
Howard Kurtz: Well, this is no knock on Corey, who I thought handled his firing with class, but for CNN to hire him 12 minutes after he was sacked is to use, one of Trump’s famous words, sad.
So we have Lewandowski’s word that he’ll shoot straight and criticize Trump if he thinks the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is in the wrong.
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First, CNN. For all the right-wing complaints of liberal bias in the mainstream media, the major news organizations often go out of their way to hire commentators from across the ideological spectrum in an effort to appear “balanced”. “I’m not watching it much anymore”, he said in a second tweet, with another link to Breitbart. CNN’s Brian Stelter confirmed Politico’s report on Twitter.
That, it turns out, is an understatement.
Because Lewandowski’s visibility is just one of a couple of aspects of this hiring that should bother anyone who cares about such quaint notions as journalistic integrity, or does not believe in rewarding bad behavior with new jobs and, for CNN, possibly increased ratings.
CNN chief executive Jeff Zucker may also be trying to make a splash during the ratings lull between the end of primaries and the onset of conventions.
The combative Lewandowski joins a press corps that he was occasionally at odds with during the Trump campaign.
But if so, that would be departure of Lewandowski’s usual practice of lionizing his preferred candidate and demonizing Clinton. After being let go by the Trump campaign, he accepted a position as a CNN political contributor, a move Kelly called “remarkable”. That’s part of how the political game is played and it will probably help ratings.
There remain doubts about whether his first loyalty will be to his former boss or current employer, and his first appearance on CNN Thursday didn’t lessen them. “If he peddles talking points and lies, then CNN will be peddling talking points and lies-to their own peril”.
Corey Lewandowski has arguably become a figure almost as controversial as his former boss, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Gray took a video of the incident.
“You have to raise an issue”, he said.
Lewandowski may be limited in what he can say on the air.
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Lewandowski brings what some of CNN’s other commentators bring: first-hand experience running a presidential campaign.
