We’ve been following the contretemps of Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and the assault on former Trumpbart reporter, Michelle Fields. As it turns out, Lewandowski has quite a reputation for douchebaggery:

In interviews with more than 20 sources who have dealt with Lewandowski during his nearly year-long tenure with the Trump campaign and in his previous job with the Koch brothers-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, complaints emerged about Lewandowski being rough with reporters and sexually suggestive with female journalists, while profanely berating conservative officials and co-workers he deemed to be challenging his authority.

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His last campaign management experience before Trump was an utter failure ― he ran former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith’s reelection bid in 2002, when he became the first sitting senator in either party to lose a primary campaign in a decade. After taking a break from professional politics to work as a New Hampshire state police officer, Lewandowski, who sports a buzz cut, hooked up with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which prides itself on being independent from the Republican establishment in Washington. Now, the fast-talking Lewandowski boasts to associates, he’s in line to be White House chief of staff in a Trump administration, according to one person close to the campaign.

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Lewandowski boasted about threatening to “blow up” the car of the organization’s chief financial officer over a late expense reimbursement check during the 2012 election cycle, according to multiple sources who are familiar with his claim. (Lewandowski in an email denied this account.)

But some of his most fiery clashes came with a female official who ran one of the states under Lewandowski’s control. The relationship ― and patience for Lewandowski within AFP ― reached a tipping point in October 2013. On the sidelines of a meeting of the group’s board in Manhattan, Lewandowski loudly berated the employee for challenging his authority, getting in her personal space and calling her a “c—” in front of a group of AFP employees, including some senior officials, according to three sources who either witnessed the exchange or dealt with its aftermath.

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Sources tell POLITICO that Lewandowski unleashed a profanity-laced tirade towards the officials who organized this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference after they insisted that Trump ― like his presidential rivals ― field questions from a journalist of CPAC’s choosing after delivering his speech. The officials refused to yield, and the Trump campaign canceled his appearance entirely, though Lewandowski said the last-minute change of plans had nothing to do with the dispute.

On the one hand, the thought of sending this unpleasant little twerp packing is pleasing. It’s not going to happen. Trump hired him directly and to fire him would be to admit making a mistake. And there is no one in Trump’s inner circle that has enough juice to confront Lewandowski:

Multiple insiders say they detected Lewandowski’s fingerprints on the departures of Stone and another longtime Trump official, Sam Nunberg, asserting that Lewandowski seeks to shield Trump from receiving other advice.
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A group of current and former high-ranking members of the campaign last month planned to deliver Trump a letter outlining concerns with Lewandowski’s management, according to multiple sources familiar with the planned mutiny. Complicating matters, the businessman is not directly reachable by email and frequently has Lewandowski at his side. So the plan was to deliver the letter in an envelope to Trump’s head of security, Keith Schiller, in the days between the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucuses, with instructions to give it to Trump and no one else.

But after Trump won big in South Carolina and even bigger in Nevada, the dissenters tabled their plan, believing that Trump would not change course as long as he was having success.

In fact, if you want a quick explanation for how Corey Lewandowski became Donald Trump’s campaign manager and has retained his job despite physically assaulting a reporter, keep this in mind “As hire As; Bs hire Cs; God only knows what Trump hires but they aren’t As, Bs or Cs.”

On the other hand, we’re seeing that as the race grows from a fragmented field running in small states to a two-man race running nationwide, Lewandowski simply doesn’t have the smarts to run the show.

Lewandowski is going to continue to cause problems for Trump (notice I did not say “embarrass”) because he is what he is. As the pressure ratchets up on him, he’s going to become more erratic and unbalanced. If we want to beat Trump we need to understand why leaving Lewandowki in place serves our cause much more than having him replaced with someone who actually knows what they are doing.