Trump taps 'secret weapon' for 2020 re-election bid

Donald Trump

President Donald Trump has named digital guru Brad Parscale to manage his bid to win re-election to the Oval Office in 2020.

Parscale was defined as the "secret weapon" of the 2016 campaign, when he was the digital director for Trump's successful campaign to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, for his influence on opinions regarding the campaign.

The Trump-Pence campaign revealed Parscale and others, on top of building an infrastructure for 2020, also will be involved in the GOP efforts for the 2018 mid-terms.

Parscale was interviewed on Fox shortly after the Trump victory.

He described how he and his computer were able to confirm the Trump campaign was "in play in Michigan and Wisconsin," where the old-school thought was that Clinton was an easy winner.

Parscale described how he told the campaign to buy ads in those areas.

He said his job was to work with teams of data scientists and assemble information "in a way that could be consumed."

The result was victory, after a huge advance in understanding "where we could target people."

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He said he actually knew, based on data, days before the election that Trump would win, and he attributed that to the fact Trump was promising to make changes.

"People were ready for something new," he said.

In another interview, he explained that one of the keys to the victory was a decision to change "all the budgets around" as the campaign was approaching its last few days.

He took resources from states where there appeared to be a decision already and started buying up ads in states where he thought there was flexibility.

He said, "I kept telling them" that the Trump campaign would win.

He actually went to several newsrooms to explain how he arrived at his conclusions, and said he "got made fun of."

"They just thought I was a joke."

A CBS report about that time time revealed how he had handpicked Republican Facebook employees to work with him on the digital ads.

"Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won," Parscale said.

He explained the benefits of "micro targeting."

"So now Facebook lets you get to ... 15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for."

"Infrastructure ... so I started making ads that showed the bridge crumbling ... that's micro targeting ... I can find the 1,500 people in one town that care about infrastructure. Now, that might be a voter that normally votes Democrat."

He described how there were, on some days, up to 100,000 separate ad iterations – changing design, colors, backgrounds and words.

He said help came from Facebook's technology through employees provided by the company who showed up for work to his office multiple days a week.

The appointment followed by just hours a "New Republic" report headlined "Trump Wins Reelection."

It explained the new "plausible path to victory in 2020."

"To many political observers over the past year, the prospect of President Donald Trump’s reelection looked doubtful at best. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly gave Trump a 30 percent chance of finishing his term. Mike Murphy, the longtime GOP consultant and NeverTrumper, said that Trump will only be president 'until early 2019.' And JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, like many others, bet more modestly: that Trump would be the first one-term president since George H. W. Bush," the article said.

However, Democrats now should be troubled by the data, it said.

"Internal polling by the Democratic group Priorities USA showed the president's approval rating had climbed to 44 percent in early February, which 'mirrors Trump's improving position in public polls.' Gallup finds a narrow majority of Americans support his handling of the economy, and the new Republican tax law is getting more popular," it said.

FiveThirtyEight statistician Nate Silver said in the article, "he's now more in a range where presidents have recovered to win reelection. His approval rating is up to 41 or 42 percent in our tracking. That verges on being a normal number that resembles what happened to Reagan or Clinton or Obama in their second years."

And former George W. Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer added, "Donald Trump is on track to win reelection. He’s cut taxes. He’s rolled back regulations. He’s put ISIS on its heels. The economy and the stock market are humming along again, despite recent turmoil."

Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner explained that nearly two-thirds of the 334 agenda items prepared for the Trump administration by the Heritage Foundation already have been implemented.

That's, he wrote, "a pace faster than former President Reagan who embraced the conservative think tank's legendary 'Mandate for Leadership' blueprint."

The White House itself listed 81 major achievements in the first year.

"Trump very early in his presidency signed reelection papers and on Tuesday he began to set up his reelection team, naming is digital advisor Brad Parscale as his campaign manager," the report noted.