Team Trump Worried He Wants Campaign Heads to “Kill Each Other”

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has just turned into a thunderdome, as his newest hire seems to spell trouble for his current staff, according to a report from Puck News published Thursday.

Corey Lewandowski, who served as one of Trump’s campaign managers in 2016, was brought aboard the Trump team earlier this week, carrying with him a history of alleged misconduct and his “Let Trump Be Trump” attitude. Lewandowski will serve as a senior adviser, reportedly above campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

The decision to formally bring Lewandowski back into the fold, after he served as an informal adviser, came straight from Trump, according to Puck’s senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri. The move has launched speculation that Trump intends for Lewandowski’s return to result in the removal of LaCivita and Wiles.

“Susie is a survivor; she’s not going anywhere. But then you have LaCivita and Corey Lewandowski, two alpha men,” a source close to Lewandowski told Palameri. “It’s like Trump just wants them to kill each other and for one to win so he doesn’t have to actually fire anyone.”

As Trump’s team has struggled to maintain an effective line of attack against its new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the campaign has been forced to defend LaCivita and Wiles for their floundering efforts.

There is also one big reason to believe LaCivita is more vulnerable than his counterpart: his exorbitant fee. Advanced Strategies, LaCivita’s firm, has been collecting $50,000 from the Republican National Committee each month, contributing to the whopping $1.7 million he’s already invoiced in just 2024—quickly surpassing the $1.65 million he billed the year before, according to Puck.

Trump is clearly trying to recreate the behind-the-scenes magic that got him elected in the first place. But unfortunately for his staff, that involved major late-campaign turnover. The former president fired Lewandowski from his campaign in June 2016 and promoted Paul Manafort.

For his part, Lewandowski seemed to deny rumors he would take LaCivita to task over his mounting bills. “I have never told anyone I will be conducting a forensic audit of the campaign, nor have I alluded to, or have any understanding of, how much money Chris LaCivita may or may not have billed this campaign,” Lewandowski told Palameri, adding that rumors he was there to push anyone out were “fake news.”

Lewandowski’s arrival comes with a slate of other aides from old Trump campaigns, and more are sure to follow. “There are things and people that swirl around Lewandowski, and if you bring him back on, they’re coming with him,” the source close to Lewandowski told Palameri. “He’s a mini tornado. He stirs things up and brings things into the orbit.”

Lewandowski’s hiring signals Trump’s desire to be surrounded by those who agree with him and won’t try to change him—while many of the former president’s own allies have begun urging him to do the exact opposite of his favored strategy of personal attacks.

Project 2025, the conservative manifesto put together by the Heritage Foundation, is starting to worry Republicans, including Donald Trump, who see it as a political liability.

These Republicans are trying desperately to figure out how to handle the negative attention from the project, which Democrats have seized on in effective attacks against Trump and the GOP.

“There came a point at which people realized, ‘Oh, you might have actually done something that jeopardizes Heritage’s influence in the next administration,” one source close to the conservative organization told NOTUS.

When Democrats started to attack Project 2025, Heritage staff saw it as “fun” initially, but that was short-lived after Trump, fed up with the negative association with his presidential campaign, disavowed the project.

“People are legitimately worried,” the source said.

The foundation tried to downplay the plan, only to find that it didn’t help in the face of Democratic attacks, which have continued unabated. One Democratic group has even started to specifically target certain House Republicans by tying them to the manifesto.

The fallout of Trump’s frustration with being tied to the project led to the resignation of Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, who some conservatives see as taking the fall for Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. Roberts marketed the plan much more heavily than the foundation normally would for its projects.

As more and more revelations come out about the project, Democrats have more avenues to attack it, especially as Roberts continues to defend it and even brag about his associations with Trump. A photo revealed that the two even took a private flight together in 2022. And Trump’s vehement denial of having anything to do with the manifesto has drawn the ire of some of his biggest supporters. No matter what they do, conservatives are stuck.

Donald Trump has angered veterans by claiming that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor.

The Republican presidential nominee, who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft with a timely diagnosis of bone spurs, denigrated the value of the Medal of Honor at a campaign event in New Jersey Thursday night by claiming that the award’s civilian variant is “much better.” According to Trump, that’s because the military medal’s recipients, who receive the honor for valor in combat, are usually “in very bad shape” since they’ve been “hit so many times” by bullets.

“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version,” Trump said, mistakenly referring to the honor bestowed for valor in combat. “But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”

Trump mentioned the award after he was introduced by one of his top patrons, Miriam Adelson, a heavy-handed Republican donor who became the richest Israeli in the world after her husband, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, died in 2021. The couple earned Trump’s favor after they funneled $25 million to Trump’s super PACs in 2016 and donated $5 million to his inauguration. That earned them a spot on the dais, just a few rows behind Jared Kushner, as Trump was sworn in. In 2018, their contributions effectively bought Mrs. Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2019 influenced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, an Israeli-occupied portion of southwest Syria that the religious state captured in 1967.

Four years later, the Adelsons eclipsed their previous spending on the pro-Israel politico with a $90 million donation, and gave $300 million to Republican-focused Senate and congressional Leadership Funds, outspending the next three donors combined, according to Intelligencer.

“She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she got it for—and that’s through committees and everything else,” Trump said, referring to Adelson. “I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

The comments rubbed veterans the wrong way, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

Veterans for Responsible Leadership, a bipartisan super PAC, highlighted the clip from Thursday’s event, writing on X that Trump believes the Medal of Honor is “secondary to the medal he gives his billionaire funders.”

“He doesn’t care about our military or their sacrifices,” they added.

Retired Navy intelligence officer and veterans’ advocate Travis Akers felt similarly, posting on Friday that Trump’s comments were “like a fever dream.” In a separate post, Akers said Trump’s remarks were “disgusting” and “offensive on so many levels.”

“I am still trying to wrap my head around how grossly and despicably Donald Trump insulted Medal of Honor recipients last night,” Akers said.

House Oversight Chair James Comer has launched an investigation into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, his second probe into Donald Trump’s opposition in less than a week.

Comer alleged that Walz has a “longstanding cozy relationship with China” and has connections to the Chinese Communist Party, according to a press release published by the committee on Friday.

“Mr. Walz has visited China dozens of times, served as a fellow at a Chinese institution that maintains a devotion to the CCP, and spoke alongside the President of a Chinese organization the State Department exposed as a CCP effort to influence and co-opt local leaders,” Comer said. “FBI briefers recently informed the Committee that the Bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force investigates CCP activity that is similar to China’s engagement with Governor Walz. The American people deserve to fully understand how deep Governor Walz’s relationship with China goes.”

In a letter to FBI head Christopher Wray, Comer wrote that he was investigating Walz as part of a government-wide probe into the CCP’s “political warfare operations against America.” Comer claimed that Walz has “problematic engagement with concerning entities and individuals.”

But Comer only listed one: Consul General Zhao Jian, a Chinese diplomat, lower-ranking than an ambassador, who works across nine Midwestern states—including Minnesota. Comer said Zhao and Walz only met once.

Comer requested that the FBI turn over all of its documents on “any Chinese entity or individual with whom Mr. Walz may have engaged or partnered,” as well as any guidance the FBI may have given Walz about engaging with China.

Walz is said to have traveled to China an estimated 30 times, and set up a program to take high school students on educational trips there in the 1990s and 2000s.

As a member of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, Walz was able to use his firsthand knowledge of China to wield well-informed criticisms of China’s government and its reported human rights abuses, according to The New York Times.

Walz was also credited with being one of the only Democrats to support the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which required the U.S. to sanction officials who committed human rights abuses in Hong Kong, keeping it alive until it was eventually passed.

This isn’t even the first time this week that Comer has gone after one of Trump’s opponents. Comer launched a probe into Vice President Kamala Harris’s involvement with work on the U.S. southern border on Monday. He previously attempted a similar gambit by spearheading an investigation into the Biden family—which crumbled, having not produced any evidence of the president, or his family’s, supposed wrongdoings.

Right-wingers are spreading another conspiracy about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: he’s lying about liking “white guy tacos.”

Kamala Harris and her running mate on Thursday posted a promotional video of them discussing food, during which Walz brought up his Midwestern palette.

“I have white guy tacos,” said Walz.

 “What does that mean? Like, mayonnaise and tuna? What are you doing?” Harris responded jokingly.

“Pretty much ground beef and cheese,” Walz said. “They said to be careful and let her know this. That black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota.”

The innocent exchange led to a total Republican meltdown.

“Why is Kamala the expert on tacos?” asked Fox & Friends co-host Will Cain. “Did she say white guy tacos are tuna in mayonnaise?”

Conservative provocateur Mike Cernovich took it further, accusing Walz of lying about skipping seasoning. “Tim Walz is such a compulsive liar, and deployment dodger, that I decided to see if he lied about not seasoning his food.”

Cernovich pointed to a 2016 award-winning recipe by the Minnesota governor for “Turkey Taco Tot Hotdish,” which included the spices paprika, chili powder, onion powder, and garlic powder.  “Tim Walz is such a compulsive liar, and deployment dodger, that I decided to see if he lied about not seasoning his food.”

Even Senator Ted Cruz got in on the drama, writing, “hispanics are not tacos.” Unclear what he meant there. 

It seems like Republicans will find anything to get mad about if it comes from Harris and Walz—maybe they’ll eventually launch an investigation on what actually goes into “white guy tacos.”