CNN didn’t waste any time snapping up Donald Trump’s fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Does anyone doubt that Lewandowski, in his new role as paid contributor, will continue to serve Trump as a loyal, if diminished, vassal?
There’s actually already a template for that—and he’s on the same network: CNN political commentator Jeffrey Lord, who has set out to “carry Donald Trump’s decidedly fetid water every day,” as one of his colleagues recently quipped. Lord fundamentally owes his cushy contributorship to the presumptive GOP nominee.
Last fall, Lord told his local newspaper, PennLive, that Trump complained to CNN about its coverage of his campaign. Trump recommended the network consider Lord—and “the phone starts exploding from requests from CNN,” Lord said.
In August, the network announced Lord would be joining CNN as a commentator. Lord tells Heat Street that Trump made the call on his behalf—but that their relationship is “not what it seems.”
“You can always make something look [like a quid-pro-quo], but that’s just not the case,” Lord says. “I wasn’t sitting here plotting, ‘Gee, if I can be friends with Donald Trump, I can work at CNN.’”
Lord says he simply likes Trump, just as he’s liked Ted Cruz and other candidates, and, as an opinion writer, he put pen to paper. “I write what I write because I want to,” he says.
In January, less than half a year after Trump directed CNN’s attention toward Lord, Regnery published the newly minted contributor’s 192-page apologia What America Needs: The Case for Trump.
Lord’s critics have suggested the back-scratching goes back even further. In 2013, Lord—a contributing editor and columnist at the American Spectator–published a blog post in called “Never Ignore Donald Trump,” suggesting the real-estate mogul may make a run for political office.
“I wrote about him in 2013 because I wanted to,” Lord says. “Nobody asked me to. I have a lot of respect for him.”
Trump sent him a Sharpie-scrawled thank-you note, the Washington Post reported in September.
Just a few months later, the American Spectator awarded Trump its T. Boone Pickens Entrepreneur Award. Lord says he had nothing to do with the decision, but Trump invited him to fly down with him.
(Lord says he was hesitant to accept because it simply wasn’t a convenient way to commute to the dinner, but he ended up doing so when a family member said he’d be crazy not to take Trump up on his invitation.)
And during his acceptance speech, Trump also called Lord “an amazing guy, an amazing writer.”
The next year, Trump gave $25,000 to the publisher of the American Spectator, tax filings from the Donald J. Trump Foundation show. The nonprofit has not yet filed its 990 forms for 2015, so it’s unclear whether it gave more money later. The American Spectator had not returned Heat Street‘s inquiry by deadline.
Trump’s largesse hasn’t bought the loyalty of everyone at the American Spectator; to the contrary, many of its regular writers have continued to vociferously criticize Trump. Lord describes the publication as “a pretty open shop” where “you’re supposed to mix it up.”
But Lord’s admiration for Trump sure has paid off for him.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Steamboat Institute.