Trump’s campaign manager maintained in an interview Wednesday that the GOP front-runner’s team has never blacklisted anyone in media. However, several reporters claim they definitely have.
A Politico employee was barred from a Trump campaign event Tuesday evening after he published an unflattering story on the GOP front-runner’s campaign manager, Cory Lewandowski, who was accused last week of assaulting a former Breitbart reporter.
“I don’t pick and choose which reporters come and don’t come to events,” Lewandowski said in an interview Wednesday on the John Fredericks Show after being asked about the campaign reportedly blacklisting Politico’s Ben Schreckinger.
“That’s just not my role in the campaign to be very clear,” he added.
Lewandowski said that the campaign hasn’t retaliated against reporters who’ve printed embarrassing things about Trump, and added in the interview that there simply isn’t enough room at certain campaign events to accommodate everyone in the press.
“I’m not trying to limit anyone’s access to anything, that’s not what we do,” he said
However, various reporters with the Des Moines Register, Univision, Fusion, the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed said they have been denied credentials to cover the casino tycoon’s White House bid. The alleged blacklistings came right after they published reports that did not reflect well on Trump.
In January, for example, a New York Times reporter was kicked out of a campaign event in Iowa after he wrote a story that characterized Trump’s ground game in the Hawkeye State as weak. Trump went on to lose the state’s GOP primary to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Nevertheless, Lewandowski claimed Wednesday he had an “amazing” relationship with campaign reporters.
“I have been honored to have the privilege of serving on this campaign and I go and talk to the media every day, and I’ve got amazing relationships with those people,” he said. “I am a person who is readily accessible to the media, I have a great relationship with these people.”
Politico told a different story this week.
Schreckinger, who has covered Trump’s campaign for more than six months, said he was denied entry at a scheduled speech and press conference Tuesday at the GOP’s front-runner Mar-a-Lago estate, and was escorted off the property. Trump’s camp did not dispute this claim, and they even followed it up with a sharply worded insult.
“He is a dishonest, third-rate reporter with a failing publication that will soon be out of business, hopefully,” Trump said in response to inquiries from the Washington Examiner’s media desk.
Schreckinger said he was granted credentials by Trump’s team earlier that morning to cover Tuesday’s events. But moments after he received his credentials, the Politico reporter was sent another note saying that they had been revoked.
When Schreckinger showed up at Trump’s Florida club later that day, he was denied entrance, and shown the door.
“I’m saddened by the personal nature of the Trump campaign’s attack on an excellent reporter, Ben Schreckinger. The campaign provided no explanation for barring our reporter from Donald Trump’s speech,” editor Susan Glasser said in a statement provided to the Examiner.
“If this is the response to honest, fair, and sometimes critical reporting — like the piece on Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski — it certainly will not intimidate POLITICO as we cover the campaign in the days ahead,” she added.
Prior to being ejected from the event, Schreckinger had published a story that painted a deeply unflattering portrait of Lewandowski as an unpleasant, churlish, sleazy, foul-mouthed hothead.
Politico isn’t the first newsroom to level accusations of unethical behavior against Lewandowski.
In a statement released in January, a Fox News spokesperson alleged that Trump’s campaign manager had threatened Megyn Kelly after she upset Trump the candidate with a series of questions at the first GOP primary debate.
“Capitulating to politicians’ ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats, including the one leveled by Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski toward Megyn Kelly,” Fox said in a statement.
“In a call on Monday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ‘rough couple of days after the last debate’ and he ‘would hate to have her go through that again.’ Lewandowski was warned not to level any more threats, but he continued to do so,” Fox said.
