In 2016, Corey Lewandowski was fired by Donald J. Trump’s campaign for encouraging the candidate’s undisciplined habits.
Then he made his way back into Mr. Trump’s orbit.
In 2021, Mr. Lewandowski was ousted from Trump world again after he was accused of making unwanted sexual advances on a Republican donor.
Now he has made his way back yet again, in a move that has puzzled some of Mr. Trump’s allies.
The sometimes-volatile Mr. Lewandowski has been given a position on the campaign as an adviser. But he is something of a minister without a flock, with vague responsibilities and an uncertain portfolio.
Mr. Lewandowski’s well-documented temper, impulsiveness and misogyny make him easy to portray as a potential conduit for Mr. Trump’s own recklessness — and help explain why Mr. Trump’s wife and children generally loathe him, according to people close to the family.
But one of the truisms of Trump world is that the only permanent exile is self-imposed. And Mr. Lewandowski has always found a way to regain Mr. Trump’s trust and tunnel his way back in.
Without the authority to spend money and with no staff members reporting to him, Mr. Lewandowski, who turns 51 on Wednesday, has little opportunity to make changes directly. As a result, he’s widely viewed as a potential chaos agent among aides who fear that his word carries an implied stamp of approval from the former president.
But other aides and allies said Mr. Lewandowski offered a unique upside to the Trump campaign.
Mr. Trump often finds comfort in Mr. Lewandowski’s feisty instincts and off-color humor. Sometimes his mere presence, others said, can reassure the former president, who is agitated that few members of the 2016 team remain in the campaign’s inner circle.
“I just like him,” Mr. Trump recently told New York magazine about Mr. Lewandowski. “Corey’s a character.”
Mr. Lewandowski is also viewed as a useful surrogate on conservative television. The role is a priority for Mr. Trump but one that the top campaign leaders, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, are reluctant to fill, and his hard-charging style is a signal of continuity for a devoted Trump base of supporters looking for such signals.
“We just don’t have time for political correctness,” Mr. Lewandowski said on Fox News earlier this month when asked about criticisms of Mr. Trump’s personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and rambling style at campaign rallies.
“We literally have a woman and an administration that is destroying this country, and if we have another four years of anything similar to the Biden-Harris administration, we’ll have 20 million more illegals pouring into this country,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “We’ll have gas prices that are probably 80 cents more a gallon. We’ll have energy costs that we can’t sustain. We’ll have food costs that are out of control, and every American will suffer.”
Mr. Lewandowski was part of Mr. Trump’s entourage last week at the debate in Philadelphia, but he remained mostly in the background, unlike his presence at Mr. Trump’s debate in June, before he formally returned to the campaign. Back then, he had seemed to encourage the media scrum that formed around him.
He also accompanied the former president on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks to an event at a Shanksville, Pa., fire station, but he mostly hung on the edge of a pack of advisers and observed.
Since returning to the campaign, much of Mr. Lewandowski’s time has been spent chatting with campaign officials in battleground states and with campaign aides around headquarters in West Palm Beach, Fla.
To some in the campaign, Mr. Lewandowski has simply been familiarizing himself with the rhythms of a 22-month-old campaign in the final 60 days of the race. But others said they felt that they were being watched, and some described a sense that they were supposed to keep details of their conversations with Mr. Lewandowski a secret from Ms. Wiles and Mr. LaCivita.
He had been earning about $20,000 a month since April as a consultant for the Republican National Committee, but party officials said those payments were recently halted. Part of Mr. Lewandowski’s deal to return to the campaign was that he would work as a volunteer.
Mr. Lewandowski declined an interview request for this article. A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment.
When Mr. Lewandowski returned to the campaign in August, Mr. Trump ordered his team to “find something” for him to do, according to two people familiar with the directive. That came at about the same time that Mr. Trump was resorting to flagrant race-baiting in search of an attack on Ms. Harris. Some campaign officials said it was no coincidence that the return of the co-author of the 2017 book “Let Trump Be Trump” came as Mr. Trump publicly rejected calls for more self-discipline.
“When Trump is struggling, he reverts back to the one thing that has worked for him, and that is ‘letting Trump be Trump’ and the glory days of 2016,” said Tim Miller, an anti-Trump Republican. “But Corey is just as likely to cause another incident that gets him pushed out of the campaign again as he is to end up in charge of the whole thing before it’s over.”
Mr. Miller had his own confrontation with Mr. Lewandowski after a presidential primary debate in 2016, when he was hip-checked by Mr. Lewandowski while making the case against Mr. Trump to reporters.
In addition to Mr. Lewandowski, Mr. Trump has also recently expanded his inner circle of informal advisers to include Laura Loomer, a polarizing far-right activist known for her stream of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally antisemitic social media posts and public stunts.
Both Mr. Lewandowski and Ms. Loomer have been recent traveling companions for Mr. Trump on the campaign trail.
Politicians have long campaigned with personal confidants who can serve as a kind of security blanket during an intense stretch of constant pressure and scrutiny. Senator Lindsey Graham was a reassuring presence for the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, just as Marty Nesbitt, a longtime friend, was for then-Senator Barack Obama.
But rarely has this buddy role been filled by someone with such potential for controversy.
Mr. Lewandowski was fired as campaign manager in 2016 while sitting in a room with Mr. Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. At the time, Mr. Lewandowski had been urging Mr. Trump to resist calls to moderate his message ahead of the Republican National Convention. As a result, Mr. Trump was struggling to raise money from establishment donors, and he faced fresh criticism from Republicans and Democrats over his revived proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States in the wake of the gay nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla.
Mr. Lewandowski had himself been a lightning rod for controversy, including being charged with misdemeanor battery — a charge that was later dropped — when he grabbed a reporter as she approached Mr. Trump at an event.
After Mr. Trump won the election, Mr. Lewandowski opened a lobbying shop in Washington, and spent years as an informal adviser to him in the White House.
But he was banished again on Sept. 29, 2021, losing his leadership position at a pro-Trump super PAC, when a Trump donor accused him of making unwanted sexual advances at an event. Mr. Lewandowski eventually agreed to a plea deal with Nevada prosecutors.
“He will no longer be associated with Trump World,” the statement read.
Almost exactly three years later, he was officially back.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
