Posted on 05/01/2020 2:41:57 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Republican insiders are siding with Brad Parscale after reports surfaced that President Trump blames his campaign manager for declining support ahead of the November contest versus Joe Biden, quietly hoping the incumbent makes no sudden moves to overhaul his reelection operation.
Trump has denied that any friction exists with Parscale, tweeting an endorsement of his longtime adviser. Parscale also downplayed the report, which stated that the president yelled at him during a meeting about the campaign and held him responsible for Biden's lead in national and battleground state polls.
Republican strategists and lawmakers, impressed with the Trump campaign machinery, are hopeful that the ties between Trump and Parscale have not frayed.
“The campaign is doing the right things technically and is adroit,” a veteran Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner. “The problem is above the manager’s pay grade.”
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leads Trump by more than 5 percentage points nationally in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls. The former vice president also holds an edge in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump was expected to face a competitive reelection challenge from the outset of the 2020 contest. But his vulnerability appears more acute amid a coronavirus pandemic that has crashed the economy and thrown more than 30 million people out of work.
Republican insiders, generally supportive of Trump, were hesitant to comment for this story, fearing the president’s wrath and not wanting to cause blowback for Parscale. That was especially the case for GOP strategists who credit the president’s current troubles to his habit of using daily coronavirus briefings from the White House to squabble with reporters and criticize governors rather than focusing on reassuring the public.
“I don’t think anyone attributes any of the ‘problems’ with the president or his decline in the polls to problems with the campaign operation,” a GOP consultant said in an email.
Immediately following midterm elections that saw Republicans lose the House majority, some GOP insiders were critical of the Trump campaign.
But those concerns were quickly assuaged last year as the campaign, in conjunction with the Republican National Committee, deployed an extensive ground game and advanced digital program. The campaign, Republicans crowed, was not simply good compared to the president’s tumultuous 2016 effort; it was possibly the best the party had ever fielded and finally on par with, if not better than, anything the Democratic Party had to offer.
Some Republican operatives, while careful not to criticize Trump, commended Parsacle for this development.
“Brad Parscale continues to get high marks and is showing that he’s especially adept at navigating uncharted waters and leading further into the digital world,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.
“Parscale has made himself available to party leaders — that’s smart and engages folks,” added Saul Anuzis, a former RNC member from Michigan. “I haven’t heard any complaints from the consulting class either.”
Parscale’s association with the president began prior to the 2016 campaign as a vendor for the Trump Organization, designing websites and other digital products. Then based in Texas, Parscale was brought on to the first Trump campaign to run digital operations. After Trump won the presidency, Parscale emerged as among his most trusted advisers, with a hand in all aspects of his political operation. With that influence and public profile has come criticism.
Some Republicans are unhappy with the millions Parscale has earned from his involvement with Trump’s campaign and related GOP entities. These critics argue that Parscale’s primary skill set has nothing to do with political know-how but rather that Trump and his most trusted White House confidant, son-in-law Jared Kushner, trust him. The Trump campaign is top-flight, some Republicans say, because of Parscale’s deputies who run the field and digital departments.
Yet given how impatient and demanding Trump can be with personnel, some Republicans say Parscale’s relationship with both the president and Kushner should not be undervalued.
“Being able to keep Jared and Trump happy while still making the trains run on time is not a small task,” a Republican ad writer said.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request to comment for this story.
Third or fourth one down, as you reported. Put this troll bullshit to bed.
this is absolute fake news,based solely on putative anonymous sources ... it’s simply not possible for Trump to have a smarter and more capable campaign manager than Brad Parscale, and don’t forget that Brad was absolutely instrumental in Trump’s election in 2016 ... the fake stream enemedia have run out of new things to attack Trump with, so they’ve dusted off some pages of their get-Trump playbook from three years ago when half the articles they attacked Trump with were fake stories about fake disagreements between Trump and some arbitrary staff member de jure ...
Not impressed with this guy. Bring back Kelly-anne, Corey and even Bannon if you have to.
another reason this is ridiculously fake news is that the fake polls showing biden ahead that the supposed “screaming match” was supposedly based on are ridiculous ... they might as well just go ahead and start saying that biden has a 98% chance of winning like they did for hillary ...
Jared? You mean the guy who was born on 3rd base and thought he got a triple? LOL.
Fake and gay not the news....
I don’t believe the article. First of all, it seems like Parscale does the technical side of the campaign, not the message side. The main person for crafting the message is Trump I guess, but there have to be others. But at this time, there is no real campaign message anyway. Bottom line is, if Trump was to get mad at someone it wouldn’t be Parscale.
And the henhouse clucks on. It’s an internal personnel matter and none of our business. The President is doing fine. Stop the leaks.
If you are not impressed with Brad you are just plain daft.
He has built a juggernaut of a campaign apparatus which is so data driven and granular it is scary. On top of that it has a shallow management structure making it extremely nimble. It is an aircraft carrier that can maneuver like a jet ski with the speed of a turbine driven hydrofoil at the cost of a row boat.
Brad has rewritten campaigning in 2016 and is doing it again in 2020.
Kushner is Trump’s most trusted confidante? Where did you hear that?
From the article:
“These critics argue that Parscale’s primary skill set has nothing to do with political know-how but rather that Trump and his most trusted White House confidant, son-in-law Jared Kushner, trust him.”
More fake news. Five people with knowledge of...
He is a numbers and computer geek, corey and kellyanne and bannon are political not math folks.
Fair enough. At the same time, virtually everything in the article is unsourced, including the assessment on Kushner. I have no particular reason to defend Kushner other than that I see a lot of Kushner bashing that’s based on nothing more than comments from anonymous sources and the fact that he and Ivanka have a prior history of supporting some liberal causes.
Every indication I’ve seen is that Kushner serves as a point man, not as a policy adviser. In other words Trump doesn’t ask Kushner what he should do, he tells Kushner what to do, and he’s apparently good at getting it done, as many in the Trump administration, such as Bob Lighthizer and Peter Navarro, have attested.
No, there is actually quite a bit about Kushner and he doesn’t get bashed nearly enough. He and Ivanka are the ones who convinced Trump to being in all those uniparty Establishment Nwvwr Trumper hacks to staff his administration originally. Kushner is corrupt. His “mentor” he still talks to daily is Rupert Murdoch. He actually thinks he’s smart but his fsther had to spend millions to get jim into Harvard. He is a totally compromised Big Tech puppet.
He has had the breaks on Trump’s immigrstion agenda all along. Whatever happened to his original assignment of a Middle East peace plan? Don’t get me started on the criminals he got Trump to release from prison, because he somehow felt wronged about his criminal Daddy getting put away for heinous crimes. He is totally out of his league, but everyone around Trump has to suck up to the idea that he is effective. Did you see Ivanka this week? As Trump dutifully introduced her with the bogus claim the she had “created 15 million jobs”, she enthusiastically bobbed her head in agreement that she had. They are both very unfortunate, naive and dimmer than they think influences in the Trump admin. Fatherly love in this case is blind.
Why do so many FReepers believe fake news?
How many times do we need to hear this same familiar narrative - reports of supposed rifts between Trump and his allies - before we learn to recognize it as fake news?
You’re evidence that he and Ivanka brought in all the Uniparty Establishment hacks into the Trump administration is just more speculation based on unnamed sources and leaks. Leaks should always be taken with a dose of skepticism.
The idea that Trump was duped by the Establishment, whether it be Priebus, his own daughter and son in law or any one else, doesn’t give POTUS enough credit. Trump knew at the beginning of his admin that he was entering the swamp. He brought in known swamp creatures early on for a reason, so he could catch them and learn about their networks and begin dismantling them. Much of what appeared to be chaos in the early months of the Trump administration was to get the swamp to feel comfortable.
Just look at what’s happening with Flynn right now. Comey and the rest of the corrupt FBI bought into the chaos theory regarding Trump which is why they so brazenly tried to frame Flynn and others. In the mean time, Trump, and likely Flynn, knew what was happening all along. It was a sting operation played on the deep state and in order to make it work, they had to allow some of the swamp to hang around and believe that they were untouchable.
No, that is not so. From the NYTimes to Roger Stone to Kushner taking over the transition staffing team.
Kushner is simultaneously pathetic snd dangerous. I am not sure what you’re up to trying to deny the overwhelming evidence.
Trump should never have fired Flynn. It was a rookie mistake. And Pence, whose best buddies in DC were Paul Ryan and Jeff Flak2, was showing his own anti-Trump leanings early on by right on cue making a stink over Flynn’s supposedly lying to him. Remember—it was actually the Pence stink that led to Trump’s massive mistake in firing Flynn.
We’ll have to agree to disagree I guess. Again, my take is that some of this early staffing or swamp creatures was deliberate. The government was too infested with swamp to take them all out initially. Time was needed to monitor and gather intel on the swamp before they could be taken out. Having some of them in your midst, early on helped accomplish that. They were being monitored all along, IMO.
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