2016 Trump team axes campaign manager Lewandowski The manager's critics within the campaign are openly celebrating his ouster.

Corey Lewandowski has been fired as Donald Trump's campaign manager, ending the tenure of the fiery operative who faced a steady string of controversies while guiding Trump's skeleton campaign operation to a shocking victory in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

“The Donald J. Trump Campaign for President, which has set a historic record in the Republican Primary having received almost 14 million votes, has today announced that Corey Lewandowski will no longer be working with the campaign,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks told The New York Times, which reported the news on Monday. “The campaign is grateful to Corey for his hard work and dedication and we wish him the best in the future.”


A senior Trump aide confirms Lewandowski was fired by the campaign.

Another source briefed on the departure said Trump's adult children have been pushing for Lewandowski's ouster since he was accused of assaulting then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. Ivanka Trump, especially, was said to be concerned about the effect of Lewandowski on the Trump family brand. And on Monday afternoon, Donald Trump Jr. said the family had played a part in Trump's decision to fire Lewandowski.

"In many respects he was coming to that decision on his own, and we were there to augment that," the candidate's son said on Bloomberg Politics' "With All Due Respect." He continued: "I thought it was the right and appropriate decision to make. But my father is always going to make up his own mind."

Earlier Monday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks had pushed back on the assertion that Trump's family influenced the decision.

It’s unclear when the decision came down, but it seems to have surprised Lewandowski and his allies in and around the campaign. One campaign official who was hired by Lewandowski said that during a Sunday morning conversation about campaign strategy with Lewandowski, the erstwhile campaign manager gave no indication anything was amiss. It was “a good chat,” the official said.

Still, the campaign that morning removed Lewandowski from a scheduled appearance on Fox News Sunday, instead dispatching prominent Trump backer Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Another source, however, says the personal affinity between Lewandowski and Trump, built up over the year-long run to the top of the GOP, remains intact despite the firing.

And in a statement Monday, Lewandowski reaffirmed his support for his now-former boss. "I stand by the fact that Mr. Trump is a great candidate and is better than Hilary Clinton ever will be," he said.

The now-former campaign manager had worked for Trump's campaign since it launched last June, but he had clashed with campaign chairman Paul Manafort since Manafort was brought on board this spring.

The senior Trump aide said the decision to oust Lewandowski stemmed from necessity, faulting Lewandowski for not getting along with the Republican National Committee and for Trump's operation falling behind Hillary Clinton from an infrastructure perspective. There was recognition, the aide said, that Lewandowski was no longer up to the job.

According to another source, Lewandowski's departure comes amid a sense of disorder within the campaign and Lewandowski taking much of the blame for it. The source said he was under fire for blocking hires, refusing to install more traditional elements of the campaign and generally causing friction.

Lewandowski's critics openly celebrated his ouster.

Michael Caputo, a Trump adviser and Manafort ally within the campaign, appears to have mocked Lewandowski on Twitter. He tweeted out a still image from the movie "The Wizard of Oz" showing the witch buried under Dorothy's house and linking to a YouTube video featuring the "Ding dong, the witch is dead" song from the film. (Later on Monday, Caputo emailed his resignation to Manafort over the tweet).

Jim Baker, who served as Trump's state director for multiple states before being fired by Lewandowski in May (some say for recognizing Manafort's authority above the campaign manager’s), texted Lewandowski a mocking job offer as soon as news of his firing broke. The offer: "Hey bud, I see you're looking for work now - I may be willing to have you interview for a field rep position I have open in Binghamton."

Baker now manages the congressional campaign of independent candidate Martin Babinec in New York's 22nd district. He said Lewandowski has not yet responded.

With Lewandowski out, Manafort is the de facto head of the campaign, Trump adviser Barry Bennett said Monday on Fox News.

But Bennett said the change at the top would not significantly alter Trump's strategy. "I don't think we'll see dramatic changes," he said. "I wouldn't call it a pivot, because that makes it sound like it’s a big move. The campaign has always been about the Mexican heroin problem and schools that don't work and government that is wasteful and people who can't find jobs and no one is getting a raise. That’s kind of things this campaign has been about over a year. We need to talk about that more for sure."

Upon news of Lewandowski's departure, Fields, now a reporter for the Huffington Post, tweeted, "Hey @CLewandowski_ I hear @BreitbartNews is hiring"

Fields worked for Breitbart News until March, when she and the outlet's editor-at-large left the company over how it handled an incident the previous week in Florida at which Lewandowski grabbed Fields' arm to move her away from Trump as she tried to answer a question. Lewandowski was charged with simple battery but the state declined to prosecute.

Ben Schreckinger, Ken Vogel, Patrick Reis and Shane Goldmacher contributed to this report.