President Donald Trump of the United States overhauled his campaign team recently amid dwindling poll numbers neing recorded less than four months to the election and replaced his Campaign Manager Brad Parscale with famous GOP operative Bill Stepien.
While announcing the development on Facebook, Trump said: “I am pleased to announce that Bill Stepien has been promoted to the role of Trump Campaign Manager. Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a Senior Advisor to the campaign.”
The relationship between Donald Trump and Parscale has strained with Trump getting annoyed by Parscale’s publicity.
The final straw however was last month’s Oklahoma rally that drew an unexpectedly low crowd of about 6,200 people. Prior to that rally, Mr Parscale boasted that over one million people had requested tickets. The president was furious with the low crowd turnout.
The staff change will not change the day-to-day running of the campaign. The news was broken to Mr Parscale by White House adviser and Mr Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Mr Parscale ran Mr Trump’s digital advertising in 2016 and was received accolades for facilitating Trump’s victory that year. Mr Stepien has been in politics for years. He has worked for former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and served as Mr Trump’s National Field Director in 2016.
Rather than removing Parscale completely, he was retained partly due to the difficulty the campaign would have encountered in re-erecting its digital advertising operation as November 3 general election draws nearer. While the Republican National Committee possessed most of the campaign’s data, voter modeling and outreach tools, Parscale spearheaded majority of the microtargeted online advertising that Trump’s aides felt were important in 2016.
Parscale’s digital advertising company was part of the campaign’s most important vendors and some people in Trump’s camp have alleged that the former campaign manager was cashing in on the president’s reelection. Parscale has repeatedly debunked the claims.
