Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was sticking by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with misdemeanor battery for allegedly manhandling a female reporter at a press conference.
“I don’t discard people. I stay with people,” Mr. Trump said at an impromptu press conference aboard his private jumbo jet.
“That’s why I stay with this country. That’s why I stay with a lot of people that are treated unfairly,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m the front-runner by a lot.”
He said that Mr. Lewandowski was a “fine person” and was being treated unfairly.
The billionaire businessman and front-runner for the Republican presidential said that Mr. Lewandowski was “very, very seriously maligned.”
He said that video of the incident at Trump International Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, showed that Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields was accosting him when Mr. Lewandowski intervened.
“A lot of people are looking at [the video] and saying, ’How can anybody be charged?’ She was actually — she’s grabbing at me and he is acting as an intermediary trying to block her from doing that,” Mr. Trump said. “The news conference was over. It was done. It was finished. And she was running up and grabbing and asking questions. You’re not supposed to be doing that.”
He noted that the video was from surveillance cameras at his golf club and that he supplied the video to the authorities.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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