Former Trump Aide Admits They Paid People To Attend Trump's 2016 Campaign Launch

Former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski has finally admitted to something that the Trump campaign has been denying for nearly 6 years: That they paid people to attend Trump's announcement ceremony where he declared that he was running for President. The group responsible for the hiring has confirmed these claims, as well. While this may not be the case anymore for Trump, it certainly shows that the man was so fragile that his staffers knew they had to pack Trump Tower any way possible to avoid hurting his ego. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Former Trump campaign aid Corey Lewandowski has finally admitted something that the Trump campaign has been denying for nearly six years. And what he admitted is that yes, they paid people to appear at Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid announcement at Trump tower. They couldn't get enough people in to fill Trump tower. So they had to start offering 50 bucks a head for people to come in and stand there as Trump came down the escalator, applaud for him, act like you were actually happy about this announcement, paid actors, 50 bucks a person, you know, not that bad, but certainly not anything you're going to retire on. But here's the thing again, Lewandowski was also one of the people with the Trump campaign that adamantly denied these accusations when they first came out.

You know, and, and shortly after, by the way, the announcement had been made, these accusations had been swirling. But, and I think it was what, it was a Hollywood reporter actually found the listing where they were looking for people, but they still denied it happened. But now Lewandowski finally admits, told Business Insider this week, yes, we did that. Here's the company we used. Business Insider reached out to the company. They confirmed that they did go out and actively hire people 50 bucks a head. Although other reports are now saying that even those people had to wait way too long to get paid, because as we know the Trump folks don't actually like to pay people on time. So it is what it is, right? This confirms something we all suspected for six years. It doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot to be perfectly honest with you in, in today's world, you know. But it does show us a couple of things.

First and foremost, support for Trump in those early days was lagging. Nobody took him seriously as a candidate and that's likely why nobody wanted to show up. We all thought, most of us thought, at least, this was some kind of vanity project. I remember inaccurately predicting at the time that Trump would drop out either right before or right after that first primary debate. And again, man, I was wrong about that. But either way, none of us were taking it seriously. So I think that's one of the reasons they were struggling to get people to come into Trump tower. But at the same time, would it have mattered? Did you have to have a packed building, right? It's just an announcement. What does that mean? It means that those working for Trump at the time understood how bruised his fragile little ego would be if they didn't have a packed house. If he came down that escalator and just saw sparse groups of people here and there, hell, that could have destroyed the whole thing. He would have walked pouting, mad, unhappy with the whole thing.

Maybe even just canceled the whole campaign. Oh, what a different world we'd be living in right now had that actually happened. And of course too Trump doesn't have any problem filling rooms these days. You know, if he wants to go out and hold a rally, he is going to pull in huge crowds, whatever he does, there's going to be people around him and he doesn't have to pay them anymore. So it's also a testament to how much he was able to convince these people that he is somehow their new Messiah. And that's the scary part of this.