“They’re failures,” said Corey Lewandowski of the “consultant class” and “Conservative Inc.” on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight, describing the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as partly built on rejecting professional political consultants.
Lewandowski agreed with SiriusXM host Rebecca Mansour’s framing of Trump’s presidential campaign as having a revolutionary effect on “the whole political landscape.”
Lewandowski was joined by David Bossie to discuss their new book, Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency, a memoir of their work with Trump’s presidential campaign.
The duo’s book is #5 on The New York Times’ bestsellers list and #2 on The Washington Post‘s.
Partial transcript below:
MANSOUR: The professional consultant class, the ones that had been brought up into the Beltway think tanks, that had sort of sprung up from the Heritage Foundation and sprung up from all these organizations that create Conservative Inc. They had been running candidate after candidate; for example, the Mitt Romney was very professionally run, right? With all of the best of the best, he had money to pay for everybody. Jeb Bush’s campaign, best of the best, had money to pay for everybody, and yet they lost really badly.
And here’s this guy who everybody … called him a clown, and your little operation, but you guys won! So does that say something about the political class and their skills and their understanding of the way the American electorate thinks?
LEWANDOWSKI: Of course it does. It says they’re failures, don’t kid yourself. These professional consultants have made a living for a long time raping candidates out of their money because it doesn’t matter if they win or lose. If they win, they take the credit. If they lose, they blame the candidate, and there’s no accountability.
And I didn’t want that, and Trump didn’t want that, and you know why? When I started on the campaign, I told Donald Trump I would spend the money like it was my own … If I wouldn’t do it on my own campaign running for office, I wouldn’t do it for him.
Those within the “professional consultant class,” lamented their inability to parasitize the Trump campaign’s funds for self-enrichment, said David Bossie.
Partial transcript below:
MANSOUR: I want to ask you about some of the challenges that you faced with the consultant class. In particular, getting back to what I was mentioning earlier about the way that you changed the election, in the way that the whole political landscape is now changed. It’s like an earthquake, really, the Trump earthquake.
Before, there was a vested interest, it seemed to me, among a lot of the critics of Trump — the most virulent critics — among the Never Trumpers, because many of them have connections to the consultant class of the GOP, and [Donald Trump] wasn’t using the consultant class. Still isn’t, really. He’s basically upended, sort of, the political, the professional Conservative Inc. political class in D.C. Is that part of the reason you think, why they are so resistant and hostile to him?
BOSSIE: Well, you hit it on the head. That is part of it, that the professional consultant class was not able to make a lot of money on [Donald Trump’s presidential] campaign. [Corey Lewandowski] didn’t hire them during the primary, and I can assure you that Steve Bannon and I didn’t hire them during the general.
You’re talking about a campaign that was 100 percent driven [by the candidate] … [Donald Trump] didn’t need, he didn’t want a bunch of handlers. He didn’t want people telling him, “These are poll-tested words to say.” He wanted to be who is, and that is authentic. And that is one of the most important things that gave him an edge when it came to election day.
LISTEN:
With some data below, political observers may reflect on recent campaign expenditures in light of Lewandowski’s and Bossie’s analyses of the “professional consultant class.”
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign spent $563 million, which rises to $1.4 billion when including party and joint fundraising committees and super PACs. These totals do not include the operational budgets of news media outlets such as BuzzFeed, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, or The Washington Post.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign spent $398 million, which rises to $957.6 million when including part and joint fundraising committees and super PACs.
Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign and satellites raised $1.07 billion. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and satellites raised $992.5 million.
Below is a list of prominent 2012 Obama and Romney campaign persons and their salaries, via The Washington Post:
Obama campaign:
- Jim Messina, campaign manager: $172,345
- Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager: $139,840
- Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager: $138,099
- Julianna Smoot, deputy campaign manager: $135,655
- Michael Slaby, chief innovation & integration officer: $113,511
- Jeremy Bird, national field director: $112,925
- Katherine Archuleta, national political director: $111,193
- Allyson Laackman, chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama: $110,973
- Buffy Wicks, director of “Operation Vote”: $110,628
- Ann Marie Habershaw, chief operating officer: $109,558
Romney campaign:
- Rich Beeson, political director: $214,375
- Lanhee Chen, policy director, $183,125
- Kathryn Biber, general counsel: $183,125
- Zachary Moffatt, digital director: $183,125
- Gail Gitcho, communications director: $183,125
- Matt Rhoades, campaign manager: $183,125
- Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior adviser/speechwriter: $172,500
- Jason McBride, deputy political director/New Hampshire state director: $140,000
- Louis Tavares, staff secretary/senior adviser: $133,750
- Andrea Saul, press secretary: $132,083
Breitbart News Tonight is broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific).