Trump Jr. downplays family’s involvement in Lewandowski ouster

Donald Trump Jr. on Monday night downplayed the role he and his siblings may have played in the firing of their father’s embattled campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, saying the decision was ultimately up to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
{mosads}Following Lewandowski’s dismissal, it was reported that Ivanka Trump likely played a major role in the ouster and that Trump Jr. and Eric Trump also were involved in the decision.
“I think it’s the right and appropriate decision to make, but in the end, my father’s always going to make up his own mind. He’s going come to come to those decisions himself,” Trump Jr. said in an interview on MSNBC on Bloomberg Politics’s “With All Due Respect.”
“Were we involved in talking about this with him? Sure, but he’s always going to come up with his own mind,” he continued. “We left it in a good way with Corey. We’ve had a great relationship with Corey.”
CNN reported that Ivanka Trump was angry that Lewandowski had sought to plant negative stories about her husband, Jared Kushner, who is working on Trump’s transition team. But Lewandowski denied those claims and reported tension with Kushner in a Monday CNN interview.
Lewandowski’s time as campaign manager was littered with controversy. Most notably, he was charged with battery after he grabbed the arm of a former Breitbart News reporter as she was trying to ask Trump a question after a press conference in Florida.
Donald Trump Jr. also tried to brush off reporting that there was intense infighting within the campaign between Lewandowski and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had been trying to push Trump toward running a more conventional campaign.
News of internal disagreement between the two sides of the Trump camp has trickled out for months, but Trump has said he’d stand by Lewandowski until Monday.
“I think we can certainly deny some of these gross allegations of this crazy infighting that was going on,” Trump Jr. said.
“What I can say is that none of stuff that’s been reported and I’ve read about is nearly as exciting and dramatic as it is in 140 characters or less on my Twitter feed,” he added.
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