WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he is switching campaign managers amid a reelection effort beset by a series of problems including an underwhelming turnout at a rally in Oklahoma and numerous polls showing Trump trailing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Trump announced on Facebook that Bill Stepien, a former White House political director, would become his campaign manger. Stepien replaces Brad Parscale, who will continue to oversee digital and data strategies and will serve as a senior adviser.
“I am pleased to announce that Bill Stepien has been promoted to the role of Trump campaign manager,” Trump posted. “Both were heavily involved in our historic 2016 win, and I look forward to having a big and very important second win together.”
The shakeup comes as the Trump campaign has sought a reset amid a coronavirus pandemic that wreaked havoc on a once booming U.S. economy – a key argument to the president’s reelection strategy – and a national reckoning over race in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Parscale, the president’s fourth campaign manager over the course of both campaigns, has faced growing pressure as the face of a campaign that Trump has been desperate to restart since it was sidelined by the coronavirus in late March.
Parscale has been on shaky ground after he admitted in June that he didn’t vote for his boss in the 2016 election – or vote at all. Election documents reviewed by CBS News showed Parscale voted in the 2016 primary but not the general election. The then-Texas resident said he was working on Trump’s digital campaign in New York and cited problems with his absentee ballot.
He voted by absentee ballot in the 2018 midterm election.
Relations between the president and Parscale reportedly soured in recent weeks after national polls consistently showed the president trailing Biden. Biden leads Trump nationally by 8.6 percentage points, according to the most recent average of polls by RealClearPolitics.
Much of the blame for a poor turnout at the president’s highly anticipated rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fell to Parscale after he boasted of 1 million requests for tickets to the event. The campaign also built an overflow section to accommodate what was expected to be a massive audience but was forced to abruptly scrap plans for remarks at the outdoor stage after the crowd dwindled just before the vice president arrived.
Inside the BOK Center, 6,200 people filled the lower part of the 19,000-seat arena, according to an estimate by the Tulsa Fire Department, leaving large sections of empty blue seats exposed and dealing a major blow to the campaign’s relaunch plan less than five months before Election Day.
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The president reportedly lashed out at Parscale in late April after he was presented with flagging poll numbers, even threatening to sue his campaign manager, according to a New York Times report. The Trump administration has grappled with both the economic fallout caused by the ongoing coronavirus, which brought his campaign rallies to a halt in March, and nationwide protests and unrest over the death of George Floyd.
‘World’s tallest campaign manager’
The Kansas native’s relationship with the Trump family dates to 2011, when his digital marketing firm Giles-Parscale was hired by the Trump Organization to build websites and develop media strategies.
Trump hired Parscale before announcing his presidential bid in 2015 to build a campaign website for $1,500, he told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2017, but the San Antonio-based web designer quickly ascended the ranks to become a member of the president’s inner circle in the span of just a few years.
The bearded 44-year-old has a penchant for three-piece suits and was a political novice when he joined the campaign, unlike his predecessors Kellyanne Conway, Paul Manafort and Corey Lewandowski.
He was promoted to digital director in June 2016 after managing a successful digital operation, largely based on Facebook, that drove Trump’s election 2016 win. Two years later, he was promoted to campaign manager, taking the helm of the president’s 2020 reelection bid.
Once described by his boss as the “world’s tallest campaign manager” – he is 6-foot-8 – Parscale has emerged as the face of Trump’s 2020 campaign, which began when the president filed for reelection just hours after he was sworn in as commander-in-chief in 2017. Parscale often appears as a warm-up act at Trump rallies and mirrors the president’s Twitter persona, echoing hardline rhetoric and attacks on Democrats.
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Parscale’s departure is part of an ongoing campaign reshuffle that has seen White House principal deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley leaving the West Wing to become Trump’s 2020 national press secretary. Gidley will fill the role left open by Kayleigh McEnany, who was named White House press secretary in April. The campaign also tapped Stepien, a former White House political director, and rehired Jason Miller, a 2016 campaign aide.