An adviser to Donald Trump is confirming Corey Lewandowski’s claim the former president has asked him to lead an effort to oust New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu in the 2022 Republican primary.
Lewandowski, a New Hampshire native and veteran Trump confidant, told New England talk radio host Howie Carr the former president had asked him to recruit a Republican challenger to take out Sununu in the state’s September primary. On Thursday, a Trump adviser confirmed Lewandowski’s description of his conversation with the former president and backed up the operative’s assertion that Trump has soured on Sununu and wants the New Hampshire governor replaced with a loyalist.
Lewandowski’s comments to Carr are notable because the longtime Trump aide was supposedly jettisoned from the former president’s inner circle last year after allegations that he sexually harassed the wife of a wealthy Republican donor. Lewandowski said claims of his exile were premature.
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“I know I spoke to [Trump] Sunday. I spoke to him Monday,” Lewandowski told Carr. “It hasn’t been reported, Howie, because I’m not the guy who runs to the media every time I have a conversation with Donald Trump, but I was at Mar-a-Lago with the president a couple of weeks ago.”
This is not the first time Lewandowski has been sidelined by Trump, only to reemerge with his relationship with the former president intact.
Sununu is in his third two-year term as New Hampshire’s governor.
Though not a Trump partisan, he shied away from excessively criticizing the 45th president, going back to the beginning of the 2016 campaign, and stayed off Trump’s radar and avoided his ire. That might have changed recently after Sununu explained in an interview with the Washington Examiner that he declined to run for Senate this year partly because Republicans appear satisfied to block President Joe Biden’s agenda and are not focused enough on getting things done.
Biden later used Sununu’s words to criticize Senate Republicans during a presidential news conference, saying their only aim was partisan obstruction rather than improving the lives of their constituents.
“The president is very unhappy with the chief executive officer of the state of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu,” Lewandowski told Carr. “Sununu, in the president’s estimation, is someone who’s never been loyal to him. And the president said it would be really great if somebody would run against Chris Sununu.”
Trump, Lewandowski said, wants a Republican candidate for governor of New Hampshire who understands that “the ‘America first’ agenda is more than just a saying. It’s actually about putting people first and listening to what constituents have to say.”
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Sununu, generally popular at home and Senate Republicans’ No. 1 choice to challenge Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in the midterm elections, rejects characterizations of his recent comments as anti-Republican or anti-Trump.
