During Wednesday's episode of “The Beat” on MSNBC, host Ari Melber accused newly rehired Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski of lying about him, warning that if he continued to do so then the two would be entering a "defamation situation," Mediaite reported.
Contention between two men developed into a cacophony of overlapping talk but the essence was simple: Melber believed the former Trump 2016 campaign manager, brought back earlier this summer, was consciously lying about comments he made concerning the attempted assassination of the former president.
During the interview, Melber pressed Lewandowski about a September 2019 House hearing in which he admitted to lying to MSNBC in an interview in February of that year, claiming he did not recall ever being asked to serve as a conduit between Trump and the Department of Justice. At the time, Lewandowski told lawmakers he had lied during the interview as he had “no obligation to be honest with the media because they’re just as dishonest as anybody else,” The Daily Beast reported.
Avoiding Melber's questions, Lewandowski instead chose to criticize Melber himself, highlighting comments he made about Trump during the Republican National Convention, prompting the host to threaten legal action.
What Lewandowski referenced was Melber’s comments concerning the attempted assassination of the GOP candidate, when he read part of a New York Times article, saying: “On the first night of this convention, Trump was his own biggest prop. [He] entered the VIP box… a large white bandage on his injured right eat,” Mediaite reported.
The host later added, in his own words, that the moment is “an image for political mobilization, a spectacle for this candidate who, we know is, by his own admission, obsessed with assorted spectacles.”
“Ari, if we’re going down this road, are you going to state that Donald Trump had a bandage on his ear just for a spectacle? Are you going to state that that was false?” Lewandowski asked. “The guy got shot in the head, and you said the only reason he had a bandage on his ear — I could read you the quote if you want — that you said it was just for a spectacle. So if you want to apologize, Ari—”
“Corey, you’re not answering the question,” Melber stated. “I’m putting you on notice: If you continue to repeat falsely that I said that, you will be potentially in a defamation situation, because I didn’t say that. But I understand that you’re working off the internet, which has a lot of false information.”
