MSNBC
Hours after his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with battering Michelle Fields at a campaign rally, Donald Trump told the media that it was the former Breitbart reporter's fault she got roughed up. "Corey's a fine person," Trump said while aboard his private jet. "I looked at the tape and... she was actually—if you look at her, and according to a lot of people—she's grabbing at me. And [Corey] is acting as an intermediary and trying to block her from doing that."
The GOP frontrunner continued to allege that Fields was "running up and grabbing and asking questions and she wasn't supposed to be doing that." The charges against his top aide, Trump said are "very unfair" and Lewandowski has been "very, very seriously maligned" by them. "There are pictures where she's grabbing my arm," he reiterated.
He also suggested Fields had lied about the bruises that appeared on her left arm following the incident. “How do you know those bruises weren’t there before?” he asked reporters.
Throughout much of Tuesday, the official Trump Twitter feed has been littered with screengrabs from the surveillance footage meant to suggest it was Fields who engaged in battery against the candidate; not Lewandowski against Fields.