Cranky GOP Donors Starting To Publicly Flex Their Muscle

A day that started out bad has a ray of sunshine after all. Raw Story reports a major GOP donor is demanding his money back!

According to a report from Politico, aspiring GOP candidate Jeff Landry brought on the controversial Lewandowski as an advisor to his campaign which led to donor John Odom — who has already contributed $100,000 — to flip out.

Odom you see has a particular issue with Lewandowsky. Remember when ole Corey got himself into legal trouble in Nevada, and wound up having to step out of Trump World for a while? It seems that in addition to high profile affairs (Hope Hicks, and now SD Gov. Kristi Noem) Lewandowsky made unwanted sexual advances on Odom’s wife! Odom (understandably) doesn’t care for Lewandowsky and blew a gasket when aspiring Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Jeff Landry brought the latter in as a campaign advisor. Odom isn’t just stopping with demanding his 100k donation back. Nope. He’s also telling folks in Louisiana not to vote for Landry! He’s urged Landry to reconsider his decision, return the money and gone on record saying if was obvious Landry “is not the kind of leader that Louisiana needs.'”

Look, we’ve known for a while the Koch empire long ago soured on Trump and has not only withheld money for Trump and some of his most ardent supporters but gotten other GOP mega donors to follow suit. The whole GOP internal struggle pops up in the news now and then but this? Now we see what might turn into a big-time major GOP food fight! I can’t help but wonder if more of the people who’ve spent small fortunes shaping the GOP will start publicly calling out Team Trump. If not Trump himself (to whom they won’t contribute one bit) then to anyone from it that gets tied to a campaign for a major state office or one on Capitol Hill.

Withholding money is one thing. Publicly demanding it back takes things to a new level.

What makes all this interesting and for me at least fun is that Lewandowski is fairly well known. Also that when his name pops up his association with Trump comes to mind, AND that whenever his name pops up it’s never in a good way. He’s got a long history of bad behavior, with a lot of it being sexual relationships with people other than his wife. That’s right folks. Lewandowsky’s a married man. He was married when he was boinking infamous Trump aide Hope Hicks which always seemed to get overlooked. And, as I noted earlier he got into a years long affair with “family values” promoting SD Gov. Kristi Noem as detailed in this Vanity Fair article. It notes Noem has three children with her husband of 3o years, and Lewandowsky has been married since 2005 and has four children of his own with his still wife.

I wonder if as might happen he’s no longer able to score high profile (and good paying) political consulting gigs she’ll keep putting up with his screwing around? Then again, maybe she’s glad he seems to be spending all his time elsewhere and not brining his toxic self into their home. As Vanity Fair notes:

Lewandowski has a reputation of being just one of the many characters that Trump can’t quit. Trump’s original campaign manager, Lewandowski was fired in June 2016 after “a series of incidents that the Trump family worried had cast the candidate in a negative light.” These may have included, but were not limited to, aggressively handling a reporter and protester, reportedly calling a coworker a “fucking bitch,” and reportedly calling a staffer to yell at him as the staffer’s grandmother was having her Last Rites read.

Still, despite all that Trump kept brining Lewandowsky back in one role or another. Only the “best” people and all that. It makes one wonder if the Lewandowsky/Noem affair will help or hurt her chances in the Trump VP stakes but I’m getting off-topic. I’m writing about this mega donor asking for money back because this went from internal GOP squabbling into the quite public realm. We’ve heard for years about GOPers who didn’t like Trump or his antics (the latter in particular) but who were afraid to speak on the record. In the same vein we’ve seen people like the Kochs quietly let journalists know their checkbooks were closed to Trump and even the RNC, that instead they will pick various sane (to them) candidates on their own and donate directly to them.

However if some of those candidates decide to align with Trump people Odom might be just the beginning of something that will cause yet another earthquake in an already about to crumble Trump World. Some Trump people are past the point of no return, but some like Lewandowsky have managed to skate around the legal troubles so many other Trumpers are now facing. And make no mistake, Corey Lewandowsky has information about Trump that investigators and maybe even prosecutors would love to know. If he and other find themselves blackballed and suddenly have trouble getting good consulting gigs it’s another set of wrecking balls swinging at Trump/MAGA world.

Keep an eye on this. It could turn into something pretty damned big.