Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:11 pm
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CNN’s paid-by-Trump Trump campaign surrogate, Corey Lewandowski, demonstrates the reach of Trump’s business arrangements today by using his position at CNN to claim Trump’s business arrangements are not in conflict with America’s national security interests.
Appearing on CNN’s New Day, this morning, Lewandowski took issue with a Newsweek report about Trump’s foreign business arrangements being in conflict with American national security interests.
Watch courtesy of Media Matters for America:
ALISYN CAMEROTA (CO-HOST): Corey, One of the things that Christine is referring to is this Newsweek investigative piece about all the entanglements — the foreign entanglements with countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia, Ukraine — that the Trump Organization and [Trump] Foundation are entangled with. If Donald Trump becomes president, would he and his family step away from the Trump Organization that they have built because of those entanglements?
COREY LEWANDOWSKI: Look, absolutely not. Look, Mr. Trump has said —
CHRISTINE QUINN: Absolutely not?
LEWANDOWSKI: He said his children are going to run his business, and that’s been very clear from day one.
CAMEROTA: Even though it would be compromised if he’s the president?
LEWANDOWSKI: No, hold on, let’s just talk about the author of the Newsweek piece. This is the same individual who said that he has information that George W. Bush was directly related to the 9/11 terrorist attack. This is the same individual who refused to fact-check this story with the Trump Organization —
CAMEROTA: So you deny this whole — so you dismiss what he’s found in terms of the connection between the Trump Organization and all of these foreign entanglements?
LEWANDOWSKI: Look, if this author of Newsweek has direct information that George W. Bush was directly related to 9/11, produce that information.
QUINN: But what about this story?
LEWANDOWSKI: That’s what he has claimed. He has zero credibility. No, it is a point of credibility. He has said that George W. Bush was directly involved with 9/11.
[CROSSTALK]
LEWANDOWSKI: He has zero credibility. No, no. It is a point of credibility.
[…]
QUINN: We don’t actually know all of the business entanglements. We don’t know how to judge what’s there or not. I can’t tell you the comparison of the facts that are public about the Newsweek story because not all the business dealings have been made public. He’s not transparent.
Lewandowski could not defend Trump’s foreign business interests so he did not even try. Instead, he attacked the integrity of the author, Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, by employing not one, but two fallacies: a straw man fallacy, accusing Eichenwald of saying something he never said; and an ad hominem attack directed not at the issue but the person.
In fact, Camerota corrected Lewandowski, saying “But very quickly, I just want to clarify something. Kurt Eichenwald, I’m being told by my producers, said that George Bush ignored warnings before 9/11…Not that he was involved, that he ignored warnings.”
This childlike evasion (“Look what Tommy’s doing!”) is typically Trump, to accuse, divert, and deflect interest away from any legitimate criticism directed at Trump and on to somebody else.
Corey Lewandowski says Trump’s business interests aren’t in conflict with America’s even as he demonstrates that his own journalistic interests are dictated not by pursuit of the facts but by his employment by Trump. Not a persuasive argument that America is safe.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
