Trump Campaign Manager Brad Parscale Demoted, Deputy Bill Stepien to Replace Him

Photo credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, AFP/Getty Images.

Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale has been demoted, less than four weeks after an embarrassing, poorly attended Trump rally in Tulsa that Parscale had boasted beforehand could have up to one million in attendance.

On Trump’s Facebook account, the president announced on Wednesday that he is promoting deputy campaign manager Bill Stepien to run the 2020 campaign. Parscale, who had never been part of a political campaign before becoming digital media director for Trump’s 2016 effort, will return to that focus going forward for the re-election team.

A New York Times report of the blockbuster news added more context, including a comment from Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who also plays a key role as part of the campaign’s kitchen cabinet: “Brad and Bill were both unsung heroes of the 2016 campaign and have done a great job building the infrastructure for the president’s campaign for the 2020 race. Together they both bring unique strengths.”

After rally debacle in Oklahoma, in which TikTok teens were given credit for punking Parscale’s campaign apparatus, Parscale lashed out at the press and came under intense criticism from some pro-Trump supporters for riding the president’s coattails to wealth and fame. Parscale had made his possible firing or reassignment a frequent taunt after several unsourced reports over the years said he was on thin ice with the president. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported on Trump’s private frustration over the deluge of bad polls nationwide and in swing states, but Parscale had brushed it off and denied his role was at risk of changing or being diminished.

““This is the same tired story being shopped every week by the same lowlife anonymous sources who are putting their own personal interests ahead of the president and his campaign, in a misguided attempt to weasel their way in to resurrect their failed and disgraced careers,” Parscale had told the Post.

Three days later, Parscale has, in fact, been pushed aside.