CNN guest clashes with Lewandowski: 'I’m not getting paid by one of the candidates'

Former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski sparred with a journalist Tuesday evening during a heated panel discussion on CNN that ended with the dig, “I’m not getting paid by one of the candidates, OK?”

Lewandowski and Peter Beinart, a contributing editor to The Atlantic and columnist for Haaretz, squabbled over polling during a segment hosted by CNN’s Don Lemon.


“He’s doing much better amongst the African-American community than Mitt Romney did or John McCain did. He’s doing well with Hispanics, relatively speaking,” Lewandowski said, prompting Beinart to ask for evidence.

Lewandowski pointed to a Remington Research Group poll he said RealClearPolitics uses.

“The Remington Research poll?” Beinart asked incredulously. “You’re choosing one poll. Look at the aggregate.”

Lewandowski, a paid CNN contributor, highlighted Trump’s support among black voters in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the survey.

“Donald Trump in Colorado is getting 27 percent of the African-American vote. In Pennsylvania, he’s getting 19 percent. In Wisconsin, he’s getting 22 percent of the African-American vote of those people polled in a poll which RealClearPolitics uses for the poll of polls,” he said. “So that’s my research, unless you have something to prove me otherwise. Do you? Do you have any numbers? Do you have any numbers? You don’t.”

Beinart argued that “it seems more logical to look at the aggregate of polls” before Lewandowski interjected. “Don’t interrupt me,” Beinart snapped. “I’m just saying. Let’s look at this methodologically. You chose one poll and three states in that poll. Wouldn’t it make more sense to look at the aggregate of polls?”

Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany chimed in, inquiring what that aggregate number is, which Beinart conceded he didn’t know offhand. “OK,” she said. “Corey does.”

“No, he doesn’t, actually,” Beinart shot back. “He’s referring to one poll.”

Beinart added that a stream of news reports has suggested that Trump is underperforming. But Lewandowski pressed for specifics, asking for one example. Beinart named two: The New York Times and The Washington Post.

“Who? Who from The New York Times wrote it?” Lewandowski asked, apparently incensing Beinart with his persistence and snark.

“Don’t give me this nonsense, OK? Beinart said. “Corey, listen: I’m not getting paid by one of the candidates, OK?”

“Neither am I,” Lewandowski said. “You know what? And I think you couldn’t get paid by one of the candidates because you have no talent to get paid by one of the candidates.”

After the break, Beinart refuted Lewandowski’s claim of double-digit support among African-American for Trump once he was given a chance to speak in the new segment on President Barack Obama’s suggestion that men are wary about backing Clinton because she’s a woman.

“Because we were talking about statistics, it took me about three seconds on my phone to find four national polls that had Donald Trump’s African-American support between 1 and 2 percent, just to go back to our earlier conversation,” he said gleefully. “There was a Washington Post poll, there was a USA Today poll — FiveThirtyEight did a rundown, and you can look after the break.”