US President Donald Trump has already got the wheels in motion on his re-election campaign for the 2020 race. He’s hired Brad Parscale, who’s been compared to the titular “The Wizard of Oz” by CBS News, to manage his next campaign. The famed political consultant is a tall man with a thick beard, so he does look a little bit like a wizard. The Washington Post, whose opinion Trump doesn’t usually agree with, has described Parscale as a “genius” in the past.
Parscale was in charge of the digital operations for Trump’s 2016 campaign in the Presidential election, and he ended up winning that one, as you all surely remember.
He hasn’t been given full credit for the victory, but it is believed that Parscale’s work helped to tip the scales of the election. Obviously Trump’s anti-politics rhetoric and position as a Washington outsider helped, and then there’s that messy, shady business with Russia that the FBI are currently investigating.
Three Trump 2020 campaign advisers have now been appointed
Yesterday, a pair of other appointments for the Trump 2020 campaign team were announced by Parscale: Michael Glassner has been named the chief operating officer and Lara Trump (keeping it in the family, as usual – this time, with his daughter-in-law) has been named the campaign’s senior adviser. Trump is dead sure he will win in 2020 – whenever he discusses the next election, he brushes off any potential competitors as a piece of cake.
The campaign team for Trump’s re-election run in 2020 have also announced that they will be heavily involving themselves in the midterm elections this year, in which officials in the House and the Senate are elected. The Trump team will be officially endorsing certain candidates in these election. The President himself endorsed Mitt Romney’s run for the Senate seat in the state of Utah.
He also endorsed Roy Moore for the Alabama seat, despite the allegations of paedophilia and sexual harassment made against him.
So, who is Parscale, the guy leading the Trump 2020 campaign? Well, he spent 15 years building up his own company from scratch, starting with a very small start-up capital of just $500. At the end of those 15 years, he moved to the Trump Organisation.
This was 2010, so a few years before the 2016 election – and that was just enough time for Parscale to rise through the company’s ranks so that by the time the election rolled around, he was ready to take the mantel of digital operations chief.
‘60 Minutes’ called Parscale ‘the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain’
In this position, Parscale held a great deal of influence over the Trump campaign. He was the one who suggested that they branch out into social media advertising, specifically on Facebook (which, throughout the 2016 election race, became a festering hub of fake news and alternative facts), and by November 2016, he was overseeing a team of about 100 people, pumping out 50,000 to 60,000 Facebook adverts every single day.
It was a crazy time.
During a segment of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on Parscale, he was called “the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain” of the Trump campaign. The Washington Post described him as the “genius who won Trump’s campaign,” credited him with the victory because it was his idea to “pour money into Facebook,” which then paid them off and allowed the campaign to send out “thousands of versions of tweaked ads” to potential voters. This manipulated them into voting Trump into the White House with a very narrow margin. So, it’s this Brad Parscale’s fault that Trump got elected, so if you’re going to thank (or condemn) anyone, it’s him. Well, him or Roger Stone – or Trump himself.
