The Company You Keep

A few days ago, I wrote about Sarah Palin and concluded: "It says nothing good about Donald Trump that he welcomes the endorsement of someone as awful as Sarah Palin."  It seems that Trump has other associations that call into question his judgement about people.

Today Buzzfeed published yet more accounts of Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski being an awful person, generally bullying people and harassing women in particular.  This comes more than a week after former Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields filed criminal charges against Lewandowski for grabbing her and nearly dragging her to the ground at a Trump event in Jupiter, Florida.  If Lewandowski were working on any other presidential campaign, Republican or Democrat, he'd be out on the street.

As of now, the Trump campaign is standing behind Lewandowski, which is admirable if Trump truly believes he's innocent of any wrongdoing.  However, the quantity of complaints against him, together with the fact that Washington Post reporter Ben Terris corroborates Fields' allegations as an eyewitness, suggests that Trump, an alpha bully, is attempting to cover up the bullying behavior of his subordinate by a) Denying everything, and b) Blaming the victim.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this story is the Trump campaign's most recent defense of Lewandowski, as published by Buzzfeed.  It seems that whoever wrote it was too lazy to separate their righteous indignation from their counterattack:

“Your story is false, which is no surprise coming from a reporter with an established track record of inaccurate posts about Mr. Trump, and has been repeatedly wrong on everything from claims that Mr. Trump would never run for President to this latest nonsense.

“After months upon months of repeated attempts to malign Mr. Trump, it has become clear some have turned their attention on Corey, a political professional who has worked tirelessly to Make America Great Again. Corey is a loyal aide and trusted advisor to Mr. Trump, and is otherwise a private citizen who does not deserve anonymous, disparaging and false accusations and will fight back will all available legal remedies peddled by a disgruntled blogger.”

". . . will fight back will all available legal remedies peddled by a disgruntled blogger."  THAT'S the kind of bullying argle-bargle I've come to expect from Trump and his supporters!