Most presidential candidates would want to distance themselves from campaign managers who have been formally charged with misdemeanor battery. Donald Trump is not most presidential candidates.
Early Tuesday afternoon, Trump’s national spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, appeared on CNN and told Wolf Blitzer that the campaign stands behind Lewandowski 100 percent.
“We have total confidence in our campaign manager,” Pierson said. “We feel that’s he’s going to be exonerated." Pierson went on to imply that, like reporter Michelle Fields, who pressed charges against Lewandowski following an incident earlier this month, when she is at political scrum events, she too is “smacked around by television networks."
“I don’t go and sue the television network because I have a cut on my arm from a camera,” Pierson continued. “Everyone knows at these type of scrum events there is jostling around and pushing and the second you cross the Secret Service threat threshold you will be moved away from the candidate.”
On Tuesday morning, police in Jupiter, Fla., released surveillance video clearly showing Lewandowski grabbing Fields’s left arm. The top Trump aide previously asserted that he never even “touched” the now-former Breitbart reporter. Similarly, Pierson attempted to cast doubt on Fields’s story.
Pierson confirmed that Lewandowsi will retain his role as Trump’s campaign manager throughout the duration of the pending legal process. Finally, Blitzer asked her if Lewandowski will stay with the campaign even if he does not manage to beat the charges against him.
“Yes, absolutely,” Pierson said. “Mr. Lewandowski is an integral part of the team and the camp wholeheartedly supports him and will see him through the entire ordeal.”
