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It’s been a long week in Trumpworld.
It was a wild week at the White House. One of President Donald Trump’s closest aides, Hope Hicks, announced her exit — without warning. The president’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, saw his security clearance downgraded and is under increasing ethical scrutiny over his business deals and foreign contacts. The president attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Twitter over his refusal corroborate a conspiracy theory of widespread conspiring in federal law enforcement against Trump, and there are rumors National Security Adviser HR McMaster and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn might soon be out the door. At the same time, Trump decided it might be a good time to kick off a trade war, too, and announced plans to slap large tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel.
In the midst of all of this White House chaos, wheels were turning on another front: Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. The president has been campaigning for reelection since he arrived at the White House — Trump filed the paperwork for his reelection campaign the same day he was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017. He has been fundraising for the past year, ending 2017 with $22 million in cash, and has held multiple campaign rallies across the country.
First there was Corey, then Paul, then Steve, and now Brad
Matt Drudge spent Tuesday morning teasing a “shock” announcement from President Trump — which turned out to be that Trump is running for reelection in 2020. (Not especially shocking.) But there was in the announcement some new news: that the Trump reelection campaign has tapped Brad Parscale as campaign manager. Parscale was in charge of digital operations in Trump’s 2016 campaign. In an announcement of the decision to tap Parscale as campaign manager, Trump’s son, Eric, described Parscale as an “amazing talent,” and Kushner, said his leadership and expertise will “help build a best-in-class campaign.”
Parscale worked closely with Facebook, Twitter, and Google to boost Donald Trump’s online presence in 2016 and was a major part of his victory. A 60 Minutes profile of Parscale called him the Trump campaign’s “secret weapon,” who leveraged Facebook specifically to give Trump a boost. “I think Donald Trump won, but I think Facebook was the method,” he told CBS’s Lesley Stahl. “It was the highway in which his car drove on.”
Facebook, of course, wasn’t the only technology Parscale used during the 2016 campaign. He is also tied to Cambridge Analytica, Vox’s Sean Illing pointed out, a data analytics form that has become a major focus of both the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the election and special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Kushner brought on Cambridge Analytica to take over the Trump campaign’s data operations in 2016, while Parscale was developing its online microtargeting strategy. (During his 60 Minutes interview, Parscale denied that the firm was useful.)
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