Corey Lewandowski—Donald Trump’s former campaign manager who bruised a female political reporter, lied about it, got fired, then landed a cushy CNN commentator gig that he quickly ditched after Trump became president-elect—has a new job in right-wing cable news.
Nope, it’s not at Fox News, a network as relentlessly pro-Trump as he is. Lewandowski landed a new gig, which The Daily Beast has been told started earlier this month, as a political commentator at One America News Network (OANN), a relatively new conservative news channel based out of San Diego, California.
“He’s working for us like he worked for CNN,” Robert Herring, the CEO at One America News Network (who once offered the husband of Terri Schiavo a cool $1 million to give up the guardian rights of his brain-damaged wife over to her parents), told The Daily Beast in a brief phone interview on Thursday. “It started last week, but not exactly sure of the date.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Herring would not elaborate on details of the contract (exclusivity or not, payment or salary amount, and so forth), but confirmed its existence multiple times.
“We got a lot of help from [Corey] in the past, and he seems like very nice guy and very knowledgeable,” Herring continued. “You know, we're a growing network, and we saw a chance when he quit CNN and we just grabbed it.”
The One America CEO explained that “whenever we had some dealing when we needed help with Trump,” for instance when “he helping us with getting interviews,” Lewandowski consistently came through for them.
"I met him and spent some time with him," Herring said. “We’re a growing network and we have a lot of positions we'd like to see filled.”
Lewandowski did not respond to phone calls and an email seeking comment on this story.
His brand of Trumpian conservatism would fit right at home with OANN.
Launched in 2013, the network has since attempted to position itself as a mini-Fox News—running straight-news reports alongside sharply right-wing commentary. As of 2015, OANN was available in just 15 million of 100 million available U.S. homes.
It’s biggest claim to fame, however, was launching the career of one of the most prominent conservative firebrands to come out of the Trump era: TheBlaze TV host and Trevor Noah-sparring-partner Tomi Lahren.
For two years, the 24-year-old hosted On Point, a nightly show featuring her now-signature rants against Muslims, black activists, Democrats, and the other usual bugaboos of the right-wing commentariat.
She caught national attention after the 2015 Chattanooga shootings, when she argued that President Barack Obama’s supposed “be-friendly-to-Jihadis” policy helped pave the way for the incident. “Put the fear of God in their desert,” she said, imploring the president to bomb the Muslim world.
Within a few months, in August 2015, she departed OANN for TheBlaze and her eventual national infamy.
In the wake of her exit, the wannabe-Fox News cable channel turned to another conservative windbag to temporarily host the show: fellow Trump booster Sarah Palin.
Now, the fledgling conservative-commentary network has Lewandowski, another famous Trump-loving propagandist, to add to its ranks. He’ll be lending his perspective to OANN when he’s not busy working at his new pro-Trump consulting firm set up just a few steps away from a Trump White House.
