Corey Lewandowski's lobbying career is failing because he's a terrible lobbyist

The former Trump campaign manager can't deliver as a lobbyist, ushering in his ignominious fall

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published May 15, 2017 6:53PM (EDT)

Corey Lewandowski   (Reuters/Mark Kauzlarich)
Corey Lewandowski (Reuters/Mark Kauzlarich)

Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump's former campaign manager left the lobbying firm he co-founded in disgrace, Corey Lewandowski is the subject of a new journalistic profile that sheds light on why his lobbying venture was such a disaster in the first place:

Despite all his talk, Lewandowski simply could not deliver results for his clients.

Although Lewandowski claims that he turned down "a number of significant positions inside the administration" before choosing on his own to be a lobbyist, he actually struggled as a lobbyist because he often failed to get them what they wanted within the Trump administration, according to a new report by GQ. For instance, the San Francisco-based startup Flow Health dumped Lewandowski's lobbying firm Avenue Strategies after they failed to deliver on a promise to get the Department of Veterans Affairs to quickly reconsider a deal in which Flow Health would help them use artificial intelligence to improve patient care.

Lewandowski also ran into difficulty because of the simple fact that he had not registered as a lobbyist. As his partner Barry Bennett told The Washington Post, "It is hard to not lobby and own a chunk of a lobbying firm." In addition, the article also points out that Lewandowski is deeply disliked by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump, both of whom hold considerable and lasting sway over the president's thinking.

As Trump political adviser Roger Stone put it to GQ, "Here's the thing about lobbying. Your clients expect results, not double talk, not happy horseshit, not show and tell. It's not enough to impress them on TV. It's about getting something done."


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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