In a town hall event moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump defended his embattled campaign manager, saying Corey Lewandowski had been “falsely accused.”
Earlier in the day, an arrest warrant for Lewandowski was issued in Jupiter, Fla., along with surveillance video that captured Lewandowski grabbing the arm of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. Asked about the arrest warrant and video, Trump said he would stand by his man:
“It would be so easy for me to terminate this man, ruin his life, ruin his family… and say you are fired. I have fired many people, especially on ‘The Apprentice,’…The problem is everybody dumps people when there is a sign of political incorrectness.”
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The GOP frontrunner mocked Fields, suggested that the newly released video proves she exaggerated her version of the incident. “She’s not a baby. In her own words, ‘I was jolted backwards’…She wasn’t ‘yanked down.'”
In an interview with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Trump said of Fields, “she grabbed me before (Lewandowski) did anything.”
Trump added that if Lewandowski had, in fact, thrown Fields to the ground, he would have been fired “immediately.”