Trump denies fighting with Pence for hiring Lewandowski

Former President Trump is denying a report that he and his former vice president, Mike Pence, fought over Pence’s political committee hiring Corey Lewandowski, details of which are alleged in a forthcoming book.

In an essay adapted from the forthcoming book “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost” by The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender, Bender detailed an incident in 2018 where Trump crumpled an article regarding the hiring of Lewandowski and threw it at Pence.

Bender reports that the former vice president “lost it.”

“Mr. Trump was holding a newspaper article about the hiring and said it made him look weak, like his team was abandoning him as he was probed for his campaign’s role in Russian election meddling. He crumpled the article and threw it at his vice president. ‘So disloyal,’ Mr. Trump said,” according to the adapted essay. “Mr. Pence lost it.”

“Mr. Kushner had asked him to hire Mr. Lewandowski, and he had discussed the plan with Mr. Trump over lunch. Mr. Pence picked up the article and threw it back at Mr. Trump. He leaned toward the president and pointed a finger a few inches from his chest,” the essay continues. “‘We walked you through every detail of this,’ Mr. Pence snarled. ‘We did this for you—as a favor. And this is how you respond? You need to get your facts straight.’”

Trump, who for much of the week has been criticizing various books about his administration as false, called Bender “third-rate” in a statement issued Friday.  

“The story written by third-rate reporter Michael Bender, that Mike Pence and I had a big fight over Corey Lewandowski, is totally false. No such fight ever happened, it is fiction as are so many others stories written in the vast number of books coming out about me,” Trump said in a statement on Thursday.

“It seems to me that meeting with authors of the ridiculous number of books being written about my very successful Administration, or me, is a total waste of time. They write whatever they want to write anyway without sources, fact-checking, or asking whether or not an event is true or false. Frankly, so many stories are made-up, or pure fiction,” Trump followed up in a statement on Friday.

In a tweet, Bender defended his reporting, saying “I stand by my reporting. The fight happened in front of others and multiple sources confirmed. It is correct—and just one of many revealing details in the excerpt and still unreported in the book.”

Bender’s book will be published by Twelve next week.