Brad Parscale’s elevation from small-time website designer to the head of Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign was a modern fairy tale … of the Brother’s Grimm variety, complete with lots of colluding with Russia, suppression of Black and Latino votes, and generally working toward the downfall of democracy. The social media propaganda effort that Parscale managed in 2016 was seen as key to targeting the handful of voters that put Trump over the top in Rust Belt states, securing an electoral victory despite a massive loss in the popular vote. So it seemed only right, in a Trumpian sense, that Parscale helm the whole ship to an even more racist, xenophobic, rage-filled, manipulative, democracy-bashing 2020. And for the last three-plus years, as Trump began his 2020 campaign before even taking office, Parscale has been doing exactly that.
That ended with Tulsa. Trump’s digital darling was in charge of both organizing and publicizing Trump’s big damn-the-virus-full-speed-ahead return to chants of “Build that wall” and “Lock her up” and the vital sales of Trump black velvet paintings. It was Parscale who daily bragged about the 100,000 no make that half a million, scratch that whole million people who had signed up for tickets to Trump’s big bash. Parscale, who set up the overflow area designed to capture the street-filling spillover. Parscale, who was left holding the bag after getting punked by K-pop stans and a general collection of teenagers who demonstrated how easy it was to derail the whole event. Now it’s Parscale who is getting a boot back to the digital basement, while Trump promotes one of his deputy campaign managers to bail out this badly leaking ship.
That Parscale would be canned after the Tulsa debacle was so predictable that … a lot of people predicted it. His case certainly isn’t helped by the fact that Joe Biden is ahead in not just every national poll, but doing so well in battleground states that the battleground keeps getting bigger. Multiple polls have Biden winning in Texas, and the Biden campaign is on the air in the Lone Star state with ads. So now Parscale is sent off to sulk and crank up the targeted ad machine that helped drag Trump across the finish line last time around—with lots of help from James Comey and The New York Times.
In his place, Trump is elevating deputy campaign manager Bill Stepien to the top job. Unlike Parscale, Stepien has been a campaign manager for two decades—as his obviously self-written Wikipedia entry makes clear. (Did you know he was involved in a New Jersey statehouse run that was among the Best Campaigns of the Year as selected by PolitickerNJ.com? It’s true!) Stepien even has presidential campaign experience, in that he was part of Rudy Giuliani’s stellar 2008 bid. But it’s in New Jersey where Stepien made his name for his work with Chris Christie.
Unfortunately, that name wasn’t for the skill with which he ran Christie’s gubernatorial campaign. After that win, Christie made Stepien his deputy chief of staff. And in that role, Bill Stepien would become involved in the most famous act of Christie’s term—the closure of key lanes of the George Washington Bridge to deliberately create traffic issues and punish the mayor of a local town (and millions of others) for being insufficiently pro-Christie. Stepien was the first person Christie sacrificed in an effort to build a firewall between himself and the growing Bridgegate scandal. That resulted in an escalating legal battle as Christie, Stepien, and other members of Christie’s office played hot potato with the responsibility for using the state government as an instrument of sabotage.
As The Washington Post reports, Christie directed a beefy digit at Stepien saying that he was “embarrassed and humiliated” by his former campaign manager’s actions and that Stepien demonstrated a “lack of judgement.” But while other Christie aids exchanged emails wondering why Stepien wasn’t being charged, Christie’s former campaign manager walked away from the scandal and, as Politco reported in 2017, straight to Donald Trump.
Trump didn’t hire Stepien because he believed he was innocent of the Bridgegate scandal. He hired Stepien exactly because he was behind some of the “hard-nosed” actions of the Christie campaign. meaning that Stepien’s immediate demands for revenge against perceived enemies exactly aligned with Trump’s own temperament. Stepien was responsible for the team inside Christie’s office that both dangled “goodies” in front of those who pleased the governor, and made it clear to others that being uncooperative had consequences. That’s exactly the attitude that endeared him to Trump.
But with Bridgegate Bill at the helm, the question is … how does Trump get new voters? Attempts to repeat the 2016 mix of racism and misogyny, sprinkled with plenty of personal attacks and promises to make things “great,” have completely run out of gas in a 2020 where people are looking for genuine answers to a global pandemic, recession, and uncertain future. The protests against racist violence by police have only served to underscore how it is Donald Trump, who was able to run as an outsider in 2016, is the instrument of the ugly status quo.
All of this has left Trump trying to hold onto a gradually crumbling group of core voters, while having no success in winning new support. But don’t worry, Stepien will think of an appropriate threat.