Charlie Sykes vs. Corey Lewandowski is Chavo Guerrero vs. Hornswoggle

Once you wrap your head around the idea that Comcast is not in the news business -- that they honestly don't give two owl pellets about the "news" except as a means of making money -- it's really not that hard to figure out why Chris Matthews put Corey Lewandowski on with Charlie Sykes on Hardball last night.

Appalling, yes, but not rocket science.

You see, Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes are two of the most prominent Never Trump con men in the Comcast stables.  Comcast has a sizable financial stake in their success at attracting and keeping audience interest.  Many of Comcast's other investments in Republican cast-offs have either failed publicly and spectacularly (Greta Van Susteren, Megyn Kelly) or are in the process of failing publicly and spectacularly (Hugh Hewitt), so Comcast is making every effort to insure that the rest of its cast of lumpen Republican horribles are that much more carefully curated.

So it was just bad luck and bad timing that Bill Kristol's power base -- The Weekly Standard -- was just stripped for parts and dumped on the ash heap of failed publications next to Trump Style,  Trump World and Trump Magazine.  The reason this is vitally important is because (as I may have mentioned once or twice) one thing that virtually every jumped-up Beltway bigot, climate denier and simpering drivel-monger has in common is that their mass-media teevee credibility is always underwritten by their close association with some established, printed-on-paper newspaper or journal or think tank.

Something solidly brick-and-mortar with a paid staff and business cards and office managers.

And so, with Bloody Bill Kristol's Ring of Beltway Power suddenly as dead as disco, overnight Comcast found itself stuck with an involuntary rooting interest in keeping Kristol's teevee credibility smelling springtime fresh by beefing up Mr. Kristol's new, boutique True Conservative hack-shack, The Bulwark.

The editor-in-chief of Bill Kristol's new, boutique True Conservative website just happens to be his fellow Comcast employee, Charlie Sykes.  In fact, just yesterday Mr. Sykes wrote his first turgid mess "post" for Mr. Kristol's hastily bolted-together vanity project.

Up until now, Comcast has been content to use Sykes as wingnut packing peanuts:  a lump of bespectacled Conservative carbon they can use to pad out panels of talking heads who are all weepy that the GOP is fucked in the head and Donald Trump is insane.  But given his elevated profile, affability is no longer sufficient.  They need him to up his game and come across as more aggressive.   More indignant.

And nothing achieves this more efficiently than giving him a stooge to yell at.  A professional wrestling villain that the audience is already primed to despise, and that Charlie Sykes can get up on his hind legs about.

Enter Corey Lewandowski.

See?

As I said, this is all sickening, but not really that hard to figure out.

Behold, a Tip Jar!