Tag: Brad Parscale

The Story:  The Trump campaign has a new deputy campaign manager, Bill Stepien, a former top advisor to Chris Christie, when Christie was the Governor...

The president said that he had never heard the stories of migrants dying, even from his top immigration and border patrol officials. “Dangerous people are coming here and the good people are dying,” Mr. Trump said, adding that the donors had all told him that the answer to the problem was to build his wall along the border with Mexico. But moments later, as he attacked Democrats for failing to address border security, Mr. Trump said that immigration would be a tremendous issue for him and other Republicans in the 2020 campaign. They want to have open borders.” The issue of immigration and border security has been at the center of Mr. Trump’s political life for years. It is not clear whether the president will acknowledge Mr. Castro or the Democratic rally, which is scheduled to take place after Mr. Trump has already traveled from San Antonio to Houston Wednesday evening. He has largely failed to build the “big beautiful wall” along the southern border as he promised. Under his policy, Mr. Castro also called to establish a so-called Marshall Plan for Central America to aid countries that have a high number of migrants, including by increasing funding for economic development and violence-prevention programs. With his immigration proposals, Mr. Castro, who has also served as mayor of San Antonio, is trying to position himself in the race for his party’s nomination as the candidate who can best combat Mr. Trump’s contentious border policies. “But it’s also helping galvanize people, Latinos in particular, across the country because they are seeing these candidates talk about issues that affect us.” The dual candidacies of Mr. Castro and Mr. O’Rourke are almost certain to place Texas squarely at the center of the increasingly heated immigration debate. But if immigration is at once a key campaign issue in Texas, and other states including California and Arizona, Republicans are betting that Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant message will also resonate far from the southern border.

President Trump turned up the heat Wednesday in his feud with George Conway, calling the spouse of adviser Kellyanne Conway a “stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!” “George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. In one of the more bizarre feuds of the Trump era, George Conway has repeatedly questioned the president’s mental health on social media, all while his wife continues to work at the White House. Good for you! #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder." Nuts." Why would he feel compelled to tell such an absurd lie?” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale initially responded by claiming he was just sour grapes. Later, Trump retweeted Parscale, adding: “A total loser!” in reference to Conway. But in December, the president’s son, Eric, slammed Conway as disrespectful toward his wife. People do see it that way, I don’t say I do, but people see it that way,” she added.

Share A month ago the novelist Jay Seliger asked “Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?” After two years of criticism of the company, he noted, its users are still on board. Seliger remarks that an earlier New York Times story “reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users’ actual lives.” Seliger asserts that Facebook is “a Girardian scapegoat for a media ecosystem that is unable or unwilling to consider its own role” in the election of Donald Trump. (On Rene Girard see this). But Trump himself, his campaign, and those who voted for him bear responsibility for his election; to be more accurate those who voted for him in a small number of states like Michigan and Wisconsin put him in the White House. After all, Facebook might have prevented Trump’s victory by refusing to sell advertising to his campaign and by suppressing a significant part of advocacy for his election on the platform. Perhaps more than a few people believe Facebook helped elect Donald Trump not because of what it did but because of what it did not do. The bad publicity and even government investigations might go away if Facebook refuses to sell ads to Trump’s re-election campaign and suppresses at least the worst speech of his supporters. In this latter case, Republicans too might end up asking Mark Zuckerberg what he’s willing to do to make the pain end. Facebook may moderate (and suppress) content on its platform. It’s not a road we want to follow to its end.

Among some senior White House officials, Mick Mulvaney had long been considered the “Original Plan B.” Al Drago for The New York Times WASHINGTON — President Trump announced on Friday that he had selected Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, to serve as acting White House chief of staff, putting a halt — at least for now — to his consideration of a parade of possible candidates, including several who turned him down, to take over one of the most important positions in the federal government. In Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Trump made a safe choice for a Republican administration — a hard-line conservative and former congressman from South Carolina with a deep understanding of how Congress works and a personal chemistry with the president. Among some senior White House officials, Mr. Mulvaney had long been considered the “Original Plan B.” Mr. Trump made the announcement on Twitter, one week after his first choice for the job, Nick Ayers, a Georgia political operative who is now Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, took himself out of the running, citing family considerations. While Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, was initially seen as someone who could work well with Democrats and Republicans, Mr. Mulvaney has a reputation as a sharp-elbowed partisan, who as both the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pursued a strongly conservative agenda. During Mr. Trump’s first full fiscal year in office, which ended in September, the deficit surged to $779 billion, the largest since 2012, when the economy and federal revenues were still recovering from the depths of the recession. The deficit has surged in large part because of Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut and the spending increases enacted by Congress, which have contributed to the government paying out more than it takes in. Similarly, many of Mr. Mulvaney’s budget proposals have pleased Mr. Trump only to be rejected outright by his former Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill. He’s the acting chief of staff, which means he’s the chief of staff,” the official said. Mr. Mulvaney was asked about his interest at a briefing with reporters at the consumer bureau in June, when the speculation was intense, and ultimately incorrect, that Mr. Kelly was about to leave the White House. “If the president asks you to be chief of staff, the answer is yes,” Mr. Mulvaney said.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton admits she still wants to be president; reaction from Trump 2020 presidential campaign manager Brad Parscale. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as…

Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. [Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.] We picked a few to answer in today’s edition — and called in some friends to help. Tom, there’s certainly a desire in some quarters of the Republican Party to find a primary challenger to President Trump. Take Hispanic voters. (Editor Tom says: The Times is strict when it comes to language. ____________________ Talking to voters in Flint The Times published a story this week about the politics of water in Flint. [Read Astead’s story on Flint here.] Senate Candidate Says] ____________________ What to read tonight • President Trump loves to perform to adoring crowds. On Politics brings you the people, issues and ideas reshaping our world.

Donald Trump’s campaign manager has called on the president to fire his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Trump attacks FBI 'scum' as he falsely claims DoJ report exonerates him Read more “Time to fire Sessions End the Mueller investigation,” Parscale wrote. “You can’t obstruct something that was phony against you The IG report gives @realDonaldTrump the truth to end it all.” The “IG report” refers to a review of the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election that was conducted by the justice department’s inspector general, which acts as an independent watchdog. The 500-page report, which was released last week, condemned former FBI director James Comey for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, while also criticizing the conduct of individual agents. It did not, however, find evidence to support Trump’s claims that the nation’s top law enforcement agency is biased against him. The president’s supporters nonetheless seized on text messages exchanged between two FBI employees, who had previously worked on the Russia investigation, that were critical of then-candidate Trump. One of those agents, Peter Strzok, was reassigned from Robert Mueller’s probe last July, shortly after the texts first came to light, while the other, Lisa Page, is no longer at the agency. A spokesman for Sessions declined to comment. “I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined...and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!”

In addition to addressing dozens of party events in recent months, Mr. Pence has effectively made himself the frontman for America First Policies, an outside group set up to back Mr. Trump’s agenda. And Mr. Pence has worked insistently to shape Mr. Trump’s endorsements, prodding him in the contests for governor of Florida and speaker of the House, among others. And Mr. Pence has been intimately involved in planning for the 2020 campaign: He joined Mr. Trump for the meeting where the president told Brad Parscale, a digital strategist in the 2016 election, that he would manage the 2020 race. Mr. Pence recently abandoned an attempt to hire Jon Lerner, a Republican pollster close to Mr. Ayers, as a national security aide, after Mr. Trump discovered Mr. Lerner had helped lead attacks on him in the 2016 election. Two senior White House officials said the Lerner episode made Mr. Trump more acutely aware of what these aides described as Mr. Pence’s empire-building. Mr. Ayers again unsettled skeptics in the West Wing this month by poaching a politically savvy aide to Mr. Trump, William Kirkland, to join the Pence team. “The vice president’s political and fund-raising travel advances the president’s agenda by aiding targeted candidates and committees during the midterms, which is what the president asked us to do,” Ms. Farah said. Mr. Pence counseled the president to let congressional Republicans work things out on their own, according to Republicans close to the White House and congressional leaders. Advisers to Mr. DeSantis remain optimistic that Mr. Trump will intervene again in the race, despite internal resistance. “And the president needs that.”

Today in 5 Lines Private Twitter messages obtained by The Atlantic show that Roger Stone, a longtime confidante and informal adviser to President Trump, corresponded with WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign. During an appearance before the House Intelligence Committee, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks refused to answer questions about the presidential transition or the Trump White House. House Speaker Paul Ryan signaled he won’t support new gun-control measures, telling reporters, “We shouldn’t be banning guns for law-abiding citizens.” Today on The Atlantic When Reagan Trumped America: Certain factors allowed President Reagan to avoid political consequences during the Iran-Contra scandal, and they could be the same ones that protect Trump in the Russia investigation. (Julian E. Zelizer) ‘Your Life Has Changed for the Better’: David French makes the case for carrying a gun. The New Cold War: As Trump continues to undermine America’s soft power, the country’s competition with Russia and China becomes all the more dangerous. (Peter Beinart) Follow stories throughout the day with our Politics & Policy portal. Snapshot What We’re Reading Day Four: Here’s everything you need to know about why teachers across the state of West Virginia have been on strike since last Thursday. (Michael Schwirtz, The New York Times) Return of the Mooch: Despite his controversial public comments and subsequent dismissal from Trump’s White House, former communications director Anthony Scaramucci is garnering enthusiastic support from the Orthodox Jewish community. (Nate Cohn) On Monday, the White House announced that President Trump will host French President Emmanuel Macron in April for the first state visit of his administration. This week, we want to know: If you were president, which world leader would you invite to the White House for a formal visit—and why?