Ousted Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale wasn’t “demoted” by the president but was shifted into a different role, a campaign spokesman said Thursday.
“He’s not demoted,” Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Fox News. “What Brad is focusing on is the digital strategy.”
President Trump announced Wednesday night that he was tapping longtime political adviser Bill Stepien as his new campaign manager, moving Mr. Parscale out of the top job less than four months before Election Day. The move came with Mr. Trump trailing Democrat Joseph R. Biden by double digits in national polls and getting increasingly poor marks from voters for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Mr. Parscale spoke at a staff meeting at campaign headquarters Thursday morning, saying he wasn’t going far and thanking colleagues for their efforts, according to people in the room.
Asked if Mr. Parscale’s removal as campaign manager was linked to the president’s poorly attended “comeback” rally on June 20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mr. Gidley replied, “I’m not aware if they are. I can just tell you that Tulsa, while the media tries to malign the event itself, 11 million people viewed that event across many platforms, breaking all types of records.”
He said of the internal campaign move, “the only thing that shifted was, Donald Trump simply asked Bill to steer the ship and Brad to man the guns.”
Other insiders say that as a practical matter, Mr. Trump has always been his own campaign manager, working closely with adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Mr. Trump juggled campaign managers in 2016, appointing Kellyanne Conway after the Republican convention to bring his winning campaign across the finish line.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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