Ex-Trump adviser Roger Stone on Corey Lewandowski: ‘He’s a pimple on the…’
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump, didn’t hold back Wednesday when discussing Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowksi.
“He’s a pimple on the ass of history. He doesn’t really matter here,” Stone said.
Stone was interviewed by Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News’ chief investigative correspondent, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Lewandowksi and Stone both served on the Trump campaign. Stone left the campaign last summer amid Trump’s high-profile attacks against Fox News host Megyn Kelly. (Stone said he quit; Trump said he was fired.) Trump fired Lewandowski last month amid a rocky pivot to the general election, replacing him with Paul Manafort.
Stone clearly believes that Trump made the right decision to get rid of Lewandowski. Stone, who famously has a back tattoo of former President Richard Nixon, said Lewandowski compared poorly to H. R. Haldeman, a central figure in Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
“Corey Lewandowski is like Bob Haldeman without the charm. I mean, he’s an advance man. I’m a political strategist. I have elected other people to public office,” he told Isikoff.
Stone was also critical of Lewandowski’s statement this week about Paul Manafort, a Stone ally. Lewandowski, now a CNN commentator who remains loyal to Trump, said Manafort should resign if he was the last person to review Melania Trump’s Republican National Convention speech on Monday. Her speech touched off a plagiarism scandal. A low-level staffer took responsibility for the screw-up Wednesday morning.
“I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about this, because he’s yesterday’s news. He also publicly called for Paul Manafort to resign yesterday,” Stone said of Lewandowski. “Does he think this is helping Donald Trump get elected?”
Stone, who said he talks with Trump from time to time, most recently last Saturday, also had some choice comments for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who ran a fierce campaign against Trump in the GOP primary.
“If it were up to me, ‘Fat Dracula’ would not be speaking tonight,” Stone said of Cruz, who is speaking Wednesday at the RNC. “I speak only for myself. He called me much worse,” he added.
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