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Brad Parscale

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Brad Parscale

Trump Campaign Manager

Brad Parscale served as the digital media director for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and as campaign manager for Trump’s 2020 presidential run.

The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on March 27, 2024, prior to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

The Choice 2024

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Going to Work for the Trump Organization

Just tell us how you see things and what you've observed, what you've seen along the way, and it will be useful to us.Let me go back even before 2015 to 2011 and the story of how you first cross paths with Donald Trump and become connected with him and with the family.

You want to talk about that? Are we recording already? We're going?

We're ready, we're rolling now.

The story of me meeting Donald Trump, no one's ever asked me that question before.It's actually a pretty random question—random way.It happened a couple of years before that, a year and a half before that, before I got the first contract.

I was at my office really early in the morning, about 6:00 a.m.And for seven years, when I first started my company, I got up every morning at about 5:00 a.m., and I would develop until daylight.Then I would knock doors in San Antonio.And then when it start getting hot, I would make cold calls, and then I would spend my evenings developing unless I had my kids with me.And I did that every day, seven days a week, for seven years.

And one morning, I get a phone call, and I talked to this lady.She has an accent.I don't really remember the story much, but I was like, “Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.”And I talked to her at about 6:00 a.m. for an hour.

About six months go by.I'm sitting at IHOP.I remember, I was eating a ham and cheese omelet.It was one of those little stupid two-seat cubby things they have where people sit right next to you, but don't know them.And I get an email; it's on my BlackBerry.It's a long time ago.And it bing-binged, and I looked down, and it says, "Hi, this is Kathy Kaye from Trump Org. Please call me."And I'm like, Trump? Trump who?Trump like the guy from TV?

And so I dialed the phone number, ring, ring, and it picks up, and it's a New York precinct, non-emergency line and says, “Dial 911 if this is an emergency, or press 1 if you've been injured, or blah blah blah.”And I'm like, hang up the phone, and I'm like, “Is this a joke?It's not funny.”

So I spend a little bit of time, and I'm like, you know what?I google the lady's name and the email, and a press release pops up, and the press release is two days old.And I look at it says, “Kathy Kaye, former CEO of Sotheby's International Realty, becomes CEO of Trump International Realty.”So the phone number—I look at the phone number; it's one digit off.

So I call that phone number, ring, ring: "Hello, Trump Org," and I'm like, "This is Brad Parscale calling for Kathy Kaye.""Oh, we've been expecting your call. Please hold."And I'm like, OK.

So it ring-rings, and Kathy Kaye picks up.She's like, "Hi, Brad, it's so good to talk to you again."And I'm like, "I'm sorry, ma'am, do we know each other?"And she was like, "Oh, about six months ago, I called you on the phone, and you were great.And you told me all kinds of stuff about how the future web was going to be, and I thought you were smart and blah, blah, blah.I was in a boardroom yesterday with Donald Trump, Donald [Trump] Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, and they were talking about how bad their web team was, and I looked down at my purse, and I saw this napkin, and this is a napkin I had written your phone number on a Delta airline flight from another guy that knew you.And I told the team, 'Hey, we should get a bid from this guy.He's really smart.'Hold on. I see Ivanka walking by. Let me grab her."

So next thing I know, in two minutes, I'm talking to Ivanka Trump and Kathy Kaye, and for 30 minutes, I pitched them how I can actually build better websites in New York and to a city I'd only been once in my life.I was a white-trash kid from Kansas.

That's amazing.And, I mean, it tells you something about the Trump Organization, too, that that was pretty—the decision-making was pretty contained.

It was very, very unique for me to enter Trumpworld like that.But what I did, I think, was—the moment what I did that was so smart that I looked at them, and I said these guys can change my life, change my career because of the opportunity and the access.

So what I did was, I waited a few days, I sent in a bid, and I sent a bid for only $10,000.I got a call later from Eric Trump a couple days later.He calls in, and he's like, "Hello, this is Eric Trump."I’m like, "Yes, sir, this is Brad Parscale."He's like, "We can't figure out if you're missing a zero or if you're stupid."

So I'd underbid every other bid by over $100,000, and I just told him, "Sir, everything I can— that website, I'll do it myself.I'm a programmer myself.I'm a designer.I'll do everything myself.And if you don't like it, I'll give your money back, plus some, and you can go on vacation on me.However, if you like it, I just need you to tell my local newspaper I'm the best web designer you ever worked with."

I knocked the website out of the park.Eric Trump tells the San Antonio Express-News, and there's an article about that.He goes on the record and says that, and my business explodes.

What was it about Donald Trump, about his reputation?You didn't know him personally at that time.What made you say, “I really want this contract”?

I mean, he was on The Apprentice.He was the biggest TV show in the world.I grew up watching him.He was kind of the businessman most kids grew up and aspired to be from a success standpoint.And I was in San Antonio, Texas, and I thought I was in a big city compared to where I grew up, and he was in the biggest city in the world.I mean, I'm a marketer and salesperson; who doesn't want Donald Trump to say you're the best?

And when do you finally meet him?

I was on phone calls with him, but I didn't meet him in person until 2015.But I met Eric Trump, Lara Trump very early.Eric's really the one that brought me into the Trump Org, and then that evolved to be working with Melania [Trump] for a while.I got to know Melania.That evolved to me getting to know Ivanka, eventually getting to know Donald, President Trump, and then eventually really getting to know, first Jared Kushner and then Donald Trump, and then lastly, really becoming friends with Don Jr. after—once 2016 came.

As you learned about them, what did it tell you, the family?It's not usual to be interacting with the kids and the wife.

I always dramatically respected all the kids.The kids were—they felt extremely normal for what they grew up with.And Eric was extremely intuitive and hard-driven; Don was clever and funny; and Ivanka was very creative.And I was amazed at how hard they worked when they grew up with a spoon as golden as they had, literally.

When did you first hear a hint or get a sense that he was interested in politics?

I knew in 2012.I already was there, and I had heard rumors.But at that point, I wasn't any part of that.I was hustling and working on the commercial side and being a good vendor to them.But I paid attention.I was not very much into politics early.I was focused on paying my child support, taking care of my kids, trying to make a life for myself and having early success.But I just—politics hadn't hit my radar yet.

I had grown up in a political family and learned a lot about politics, but I had much—I didn't have much interest in politics myself other than paying attention, watching a little bit of Fox News.

And then on February 21, 2015, I get an email, and it says, “Donald Trump's thinking about running for president, and would you like to help?”And it was from Amanda Miller, who used to be Hope Hicks' boss.And I replied back, “Yeah, sure.”That's how I became—

Any idea of what you were getting into?

And that's how I became employee no. 1. …

For some reason no one's ever asked me this story on tape.

It is a fascinating story.

I've been offered a lot of money for that documentary.

And a cocktail napkin started it all.

It was a Delta napkin, I believe, if I remember correctly.

… So you were employee no. 1 on the campaign?

I was employee no. 1 to the—as I believe, I received check no. 1 from the—actually check 1 from the exploratory committee and then went on to stay in the campaign, the '16, the '20, his PACs.I believe I've been employed by everything that Donald Trump has done in politics, and full-time the entire time.

Why Trump Ran in 2016

… One of the questions that we have is, why did he decide to run for president?People have said it was a lark or a branding exercise.Why did Donald Trump run for president in 2016?

Look, I can't speak for him exactly, but I sat with him multiple times on Air Force One having deep conversations about what he got himself into, and multiple times he told me he was emotional about how the country was falling apart from what he knew in the '80s and the success he had in building Trump Tower and the way he felt the opportunities were for him.I think he felt that the opportunities weren't that for the next generation, and the next generation, his grandkids’, would be even worse.

Regardless of Trump the tough guy on stage, Trump the tough guy in interviews, when you sit with him alone, he's a caring guy.That's why some of my later things that happened with him were shocking to me.But the times of being with him, the hundreds of times I saw a guy who drastically cared about the American people and cared about his family, cared about other people's families.

There's a lot of stories that he hasn't told of his generosity, from leaving multi-thousand-dollar tips to people in trouble to stopping on the side of the road and helping other people fix tires to paying off people's mortgages because he felt like they had no chance and no opportunity and he felt bad for them.I think that's the side that everyone wants to forget about Trump, and all they want to do is listen to his rhetoric on stage, and that rhetoric is to build a movement to help save a country.

I never really thought about any of this, but look what's happened to him.Nothing in his life's better like that.I mean, the guy had the golden life.He could play golf every day; he was seen as a business icon and a billionaire.And he put himself in between the system, and he wedged himself in there.I like to say he's Samson from the Bible, and he's the guy that's going to push over the temple.

And that’s part of the question we have, too, is why did he think that he could do it with his background in business and as a reality-TV star and, as you know, almost everybody wrote him off from the very beginning.Why did he think that he could do it?

The man I know thinks he can do anything, walk on water.That's what he thinks.And sometimes it takes a person like that to make change.And so, regardless of correct/wrong, like or dislike, it takes somebody with an amount of courage to do that, and that's the kind of guy he is.I think he would rather win than have any friends.That’s a mentality different than other people.

I think that he has a policy to not take anything personal, and I think that that's a rare trait of humans, is to absolutely, under all conditions, not take anything personal as a policy.And I think that the other thing is, at the early part of it, most people don't think that—most people think that—well, reality is an acquired taste, and most people can't taste their reality.And early on, Donald Trump could taste the reality of what was happening, and most people didn't want to listen.And that's why people wrote him off, because they wouldn't accept the reality of where our country had gotten.They liked the fairy-tale story versus the real story.And I didn't really get to see that until I got deep in with Trump to really see how things were.

And what about your perspective?When you started, did you think that he had a chance?Was there something that you saw that changed your opinion as the campaign was going on?

Well, of course.In 2015, I thought that possibly this was just a PR stunt.I didn't know.I didn't know the man that well yet, but I thought it was clever either way.And then I really started to learn who he was in the summer of '15, and I started listening to him, and once he gave the first debate, I was all in, like, I was, like, this is finally somebody saying what I always have been saying.

And he resonated.He resonated with where I came from.I come from flyover country in Kansas, and it resonated.And then I got deeper and deeper into it and learning more and more, and educated myself and listened to him.And eventually, his style and my marketing talents came together into what ended up becoming the 2016 campaign, and I think the campaign that changed politics forever.

Parscale Saw Growing Movement on Social Media

You were involved on the web, the internet side of it.Were you starting to see things that the rest of us wouldn't have in 2015-2016?

You know, I was a web guy, but I was also a developer; I was a marketer; I was a businessperson, a boot-strapper.I'd been successful, and I already sold a company and was on my second company, and I'd done multiple things.They like to write me off as just some web designer.My company in the last year did $100 million and had 100 employees.I don't really consider that just an at-home web designer.But they like to write me off as I was just some guy on the side of the street that just Donald Trump found, but not obviously true.

But when I was looking on Facebook early on in 2015, I started to see trends.I could see—I spent so many years on Facebook advertising and marketing, I saw what was not natural, and I tried to start finding ways to measure it.And we started using some tools, some early basic AI machine learning tools, to start really measuring what was happening.And we were able to start predicting that he was going to win elections by what was happening on Facebook.And Facebook had such an open API at the time and shared so much information that you could really determine that we were just crushing the opponents, that this movement was growing, a grassroots, almost like a fire, a forest fire, a field or a farm on fire, and just those little grass brushfires were growing everywhere, and it was turning into a big fire.

And that's when I really started to see the potential and understand it and started to contemplate with some of my partners, especially Gary Coby, on how to take that and turn this into the biggest fire in history.And the two of us sat down on a whiteboard, and we started figuring out all the ways we could do it.

So you were seeing that at the same time that so many people in Washington and on cable TV talk shows were dismissing him.Was it a divided reality, that campaign?

As I said, for the media especially, reality's an acquired taste, and they don't like the taste of it.They like the taste of their own reality in their mind.And so bubbleism is one of the worst things that happens in D.C. and New York.I hate to tell everybody in New York, but the rest of the United States doesn't look like New York, doesn't act like New York, and doesn't want to act like New York, so there's—as I sit in New York.

The reality was they didn't—they couldn't believe that technology had finally connected the rural areas together, and once they got connected, they started having a single voice, and that voice was, “We're sick of the status quo.We're sick of the bureaucracy.We're sick of the bureaucratic state and how the state is in charge and not the elected officials.”

And then the corruption that was occurring with elected officials, the power grab, the moving of—self-governance in the Constitution was built on having the most powerful political person be the person that's closest to you, the person that's in your neighborhood, the person who lives in your county.And that's been slowly shredded away into federalism and to take the power into the hands of a few in D.C.This movement was the first person to stand up and say, “No, that's not how it should be.”

And I think people were resonating to that.People were resonating to, it was time to bust a bubble.Like the Department of Education, you know, someone in D.C. telling your kid in Kansas how they should be educated, but always just feeling that their kids' education is getting worse.

So those kind of things were prominent, were everywhere—the immigration problems, economic problems, debt.So Trump resonated.He spoke their voice.And when you saw it online for the first time, Facebook gave an avenue.All these older people had got on to see their kids, grandkids, and then they saw political messages at the same time, and it lit them up.The next thing you know, you have tens of millions of people lit on fire, and Trump was the catalyst.He was the fuel.

And now, whether he made the movement or the movement made him, I believe the movement made him a lot; this had started with the Tea Party.It was just looking for the right leader and fire-starter to get it all going, and Donald Trump walked right into it and threw the match in.

Trump Understood the Movement

It's interesting that you say that the movement was there and then Trump found it.Was it just that his personality fit it, or was he paying attention to this is where people are, and this is my moment?

Well, I would never speak for another human's brain because that's not a real thing you can do, but I think that he was very aware.I think he reads the people quite good, and I think he knew this movement was out there.He had been watching and waiting for the moment.But then he—you can just say—put it this way: If there's a fire, the wood was out there drying and drying and drying; it was just waiting for the right person to throw the match in and then lead the fire in the right direction, and that's what Donald Trump did.

And I didn't really see that until I reflected on it in a lot of ways.But the Tea Party had started it.I mean, this goes back years.This movement has been there, and it was looking for the right leader to say, “We matter”; that this isn't just a country of four cities; this is the country of thousands of cities and towns and townships.And I think that was what people were waiting for.

And I think if you look at his map in 2016, you'll see most of the country geographically was covered in red.Only a few cities really went blue.And I think that's what the rest of America was saying is, “We were ready for somebody that was listening to us.”

Ups and Downs in the 2016 Campaign

As you go into the fall, I want to ask you about Access Hollywood, but before that, how are you feeling inside the campaign before that moment?

We could talk about that for 20 years and 200 textbooks, but, you know, it's ups and downs.Campaigns are, you know—I'm some days surviving because somebody wants to kill me, take me off, try to destroy me, take the revenue I'm making in helping him.Somebody wants the glory.Somebody else thinks they're smarter.That's one week, and then the next week, you're back in the driver's seat, and you're pushing out content, doing things.Hillary Clinton made, like, 6,500 ads; we made 5.8 million.I had 100 people just in a room as a factory, 24 hours, seven days a week, creating content.That was ups and downs; it was a lot of lack of sleep.I was flying back and forth to San Antonio and New York every week.I lived in the sky, and going back and forth and trying to keep people from New York not killing me and then getting back to San Antonio and keep it organized, and then going back to New York and make sure people don't kill me.

And multiple days, you know.And then some days Jared would turn off his phone because Sabbath or some Jewish holiday, and there'd be a coup against me and try to take me out to make sure they want to buy the TV ads, they want to get rid of—they don't like the content I'm making and they want this or that.And they would try to take me out during those three days, and then I would have to survive it.And that sometimes was verbal arguments with Trump, me telling Trump he's wrong, Trump telling me bad things and me almost quitting a couple of times and then saying, “You know what?This is worth it,” and coming back again and getting back in the fight again.

I remember one day he came screaming, yelling at me, and it was the only time he ever came down to the campaign floor before election night.He was trying to find me.And he came down.There was no Secret Service agents. It was just him.And he walked in my office, and I was like, I kind of just was like, "Hello, sir."And he just was hovering over me, "What are you doing?Brad, what are you doing?"And I'm like, "OK, I'm cutting video edits."We get over my shoulder, and we edit some videos together, and he's like, "I need to go in and wash my hands."And he takes me back into a kitchen, washes his hands, looks at me, pretty much puts me up against the wall and says, "See that?See that?"And one of his TV commercials, which I had edited and produced with Larry Weitzner, was on.He's like, "That's what is going to win this election."I said, "Frankly, sir, you're wrong."And he got pissed."How much money you making off this?I think you're wrong," blah, blah, blah.And I said, "You're going to win on Facebook, sir."I said, "The only way you're going to be president is you win on social media.You can't beat her on TV."He yelled at me a little more, a few profanities hit my face.I turned around and Kellyanne Conway, David Bossie— all standing there just behind him, all smiling.And David Bossie looks at me and says, "Well, you have a good day then, Brad," and they all walked off.

They wanted me be fired.They wanted their methodology.That day I almost quit.I walked the streets of New York for about an hour, talking to all the kids, Trump's kids, on the phone, and they talked me off the cliff to not quit.

I came back to the office, finished my job that day and put it behind me.

Chaos Inside the Campaign

Is it part of Donald Trump's leadership style?Look at what happened inside the White House as well inside that campaign and the various different campaign managers.Is there a level of chaos that's part of the way he leads things?

I think '16 was chaotic.I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think when I took over in 2018 until the day I leave, the campaign was pretty, was pretty controlled.I think that there was, if you look at the news stories, there was not much about chaos.It was actually like, Parscale brings a certain amount of system.

Now, every day I did that, I was taking another knife in the back, because chaos was pay.I believe in politics, rage pays.And so if you can get rage and you can get people all riled up, in the excess of that, people make money.People gain power.People gain notoriety.And these are the things those people want.I want to be famous like another hole in my head.I don't want to do it at all.I didn't do very good with fame.That wasn't what I was looking for.And I definitely wasn't looking for power.

So what I was trying to do was to create a wall between the chaos of the White House, which I call—I think the simpler way to say it is, the type of chaos was a shame culture, was a culture of shame.I do say it was a culture of prevention: Don't do anything wrong or you will pay.And I wanted to create a shield between that and create a culture of honor, of creativity, and a creative space where you would be celebrated for making a mistake.I wanted to create that kind of culture.I wanted people to have the freedom to think outside the box.How do we beat [Joe] Biden here?How do we do this?

And I tried to create that for a couple of years.But I had to be a firewall to that, and unfortunately, that meant I had to take daggers and arrows and shanks in the yard every day to protect my clan, in a way.It's very much like that.But all politics is like that.It's a dirty business.And I say it's not something you can work for permanently.It's not a job; it's an adventure.You climb a rock, you fall down a few times, and you might break your head open.It's not a drive in the park.It's a rock climb that you hope you get to the top and survive, and when you get to the top, five minutes later, someone's at the top pushing you off it.

And that's just part of it.That's just how it works.It's designed that way.It's unfortunate, it is.It's a broken incentive structure.And so as long as they keep the incentive structures as like they are, it's always going to be like that, because humans take the path of least resistance, and the incentive structure that works the best for them.

The Access Hollywood Moment

… So let me ask you about the Access Hollywood moment.What was it like inside the campaign that moment where everybody was saying he's done?

I don't think that's exactly true.I think some people said that.We were all mostly in the conference room together when it happened.He was doing debate prep, and there was about 12 of us in a room when we played the video for him to see it.I actually think it was played from Katie Walsh's laptop.She was the RNC chief of staff at the time.And Reince [Priebus] is in the room, Chris Christie.I think Rudy [Giuliani]'s in the room, [Steve] Bannon, me.Stephen [Miller] was there.Trying to think who else was there.I'm sure Eric Trump was in there.Who knows who was also in there?

But they were all getting him prepared for debate, and the video played, and Trump kind of watched it and was like—I think he was a little indifferent about it.And then he asked Katie, "Do you think this is bad?"I think Katie turned around and said, "Well, it's not good."

And that's when the famous RNC exit happened.And so within an hour or two, Reince had pretty much told the RNC, “This thing's over.Exit stage left.Get out of the building.”I had heard that everyone left the San Antonio office from the RNC, started to fly out, and there started to be this mass exodus.

I didn't see it that way.I thought that Trump would be able to talk his way out of it.Me and Jared got in a fight downstairs, a little argument.He told me my place.We were walking into a room, and they were going to film this clip at like 11:30 at night, and we were waiting for the teleprompter for two hours.It was just like me, Jared, Kellyanne, I think maybe Hope and Donald Trump, and then it was just me.They all went out and were talking, and me and Trump got—I was stuck alone with him for about 30 minutes in the room, and we were just chitchatting, and he didn't seem too worried.

And I don't think that he agreed with what was happening, but I think at the moment he was, like, trying to listen to his advisers, which tells you that he listens.And I could hear Jared and Kellyanne and everybody out there trying to debate what to do, and eventually they come in; they kick me out.And I walk out; Jared kicks me out.

And I come back in, and I kind of look at Jared, and I said, "I don't think he should do this.I don't think he owes an apology to anybody."I said, "The only person he owes an apology really is to his wife.He doesn't owe an apology to the American people.He wasn't president."I was like, "He's an actor.He's acting.Why does he need to do this?"And Jared yelled at me and told me I need to stay in my lane, and I walked off and started eating some pizza, and I let him film it.Then I took the USB drive, brought it upstairs, put it on my laptop, edited it and pushed it out to the world.

And as I understand it, the president did come to regret that, making that video.

Maybe.Maybe I was right.Who knows?Only God knows.But that's how the night went.I ate some cold pizza while I waited for a USB drive of a file of him apologizing to the people, and it took about two and a half hours to make that video because the teleprompter was on its way to New Hampshire for a rally like two days later, and they were somewhere in 140th Street or some ridiculous thing, and it took a long time for, you know, in New York, to get back 100 blocks, 80 blocks or whatever.

And so, you know, it was an interesting evening.That was the first time Jared broke Shabbat as I know.He was on his cell phone, because that was a Friday night, if I believe so.

And after that video's released, the campaign sort of doubles down on pushing back against it in the end, and fighting back pretty aggressively against the Clintons.

Actually I think it helped Trump, because he went into the second debate, and he stopped trying to be—he stopped trying to be the Trump the explainer.If you're explaining, you're losing; if you're entertaining, you're winning.And Trump stopped being the explainer.And what Trump did is, he went on the second debate with almost nothing to lose.It's almost like going into the Super Bowl as the 40-point underdog, and, “OK, let's throw a Hail Mary on play two,” right?Like, who's going to do that in the Super Bowl, right?When you're the underdog by 40, you can, because no one expects anything from you.

They expected him to completely falter and fail, and he did the opposite.He antagonized her.He entertained.He let her be the explainer in chief.And the American people saw what they wanted—a person who stands up.I don't know if it was Mike Tyson that said it's not about how many times you knock other people out kind of thing, or how many times you get hit the face.It's when you get knocked out, how many times you get back up, right?And so I think the American people liked somebody who gets knocked out and gets back up.

I don't think anyone in America thinks people are perfect.I think what they see is courage when you choose to get back up, when you choose to get back in the ring.That's what most people won't do, because you don't know what it feels like to get punched in the face until you do.And I think Donald Trump got punched in the face.And I think what he did, as a guy of courage, which I still respect today, was he got out there, and he threw fists again.And the story changed.And they didn't get the big win with the moment they had been holding for and showing that he's some guy— maybe the PR was handled incorrectly. ...

… But yeah, it's a fascinating story for us because it fits with other things in his life where he just like keeps going, like the bankruptcies, where you would think that he's done or he's going to give up, and he sort of has this—there's something about him that's unstoppable.

Well, you can think about me sitting here, too.I got pretty knocked out myself.I got pretty bought at the bottom of my mental health, everything I'd been through—losing two children, getting fired by Trump, getting publicly shamed.I just said—I just started to make it a policy to not take anything, you know—to take anything personal.And what I really learned to do is not to kind of control the past with regret, control the current with anger or frustration, and I definitely can't control the future with anxiety.

And the other fact I had to learn is, nobody really cares.They’ve got their own problems to deal with, and you think everyone's looking at you, and they're really not.They’ve got their own problems to deal with.And I think that it's just about getting back up and getting on with your life and doing the best you can.

And I think that was one thing I think Trump taught me, and also God and the Bible taught me, but I had my own downsides, you know.Losing two children was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life.

Yeah, those are, I mean, those are the life lessons you try and teach your kids, but they're hard to learn.

Yeah, yeah.Burying your children is not my—I don't wish on my worst enemy.

Election Night 2016

Yeah.So let's go back to the election in 2016 and election night and the victory that—you can tell me if you were expecting it.Other people were certainly surprised.

I was.I was.

So tell me what it was like then, that night.

Well, actually, I knew a few days before.There's a famous picture of Eric Trump and me in my office in Trump Tower on the 14th floor.And I'm in my office, and—it was funny.This is how power works.Every time I'd leave, I got kicked down to a smaller office from people who thought they were more important than me.So I had a nice office, and then Dave Bossie shows up, kicks me out; then Bannon kicks me out.But I don't care.I was like, just give me a cubicle and a computer, and I'll win this thing.

And I'm in looking at my computer, and I'm looking at all the data, and there's this moment where my brain calculates the math of early voting to the statistical probability of what we already thought the turnout was.And this was on Thursday or Friday; I believe it was Friday.No, no, sorry, it was over the weekend.I think it was on Sunday night.

And I'm looking at the data, I'm looking at the data, I'm looking at the data, and I'm like, I draw a line, and we cross it by a vote.It was a couple hundred votes.I said the probability was, we're going to cost it by 10,000 votes.I called up Eric Trump on the 25th floor, and I tell him to come down to my office.And he comes down, and I look at it, and he's looking at it.Katrina Pierson is over our shoulder, and she famously takes a picture of that moment.And the moment is I'm explaining it to Eric Trump that I think we passed the probability of winning.And I said, “I don't think we can lose now.”And that was a huge moment where I was confident.

And if you read some people's books, for the next two days, until Tuesday night, everyone's just, like, starts collecting in my office because I'm in there smiling like, this is over.And everyone else thought we were going to lose.Trump says, “I'm just going to go down on Fifth Avenue and say I lost, and I'm not going to give a speech at the Hilton, and I'm just going to get in my plane and go to Scotland.”

And I keep telling Trump he's going to win.I keep coming in.And then eventually we're up in his apartment.It's me; my wife's up there; Steve Bannon.Everybody's up there: the vice president—not vice president yet, Melania, his kids, everybody, Jared Kushner, the family part, Eric Trump.I've never shared a picture yet.There's a picture I have of Trump writing the victory speech and everyone sitting around the gold table in his dining room.

But there's a moment I walk over to the vice president.I said, "Congratulations, sir, you're the vice president."He goes, "Really?"I said, "Yes, they're going to call Pennsylvania any minute, and it's over."And I said, "Even that, we're going to win more than we need."And he kind of gave me a half hug, and then I walked in.I saw Trump, and I told Trump, I said, "You're going to win."I said, "Pennsylvania's coming any minute."He was like, "They haven't said it on TV."I was like, "We have data before them.They're going to have to check it three times.I'm telling you, our math shows you won.And you won, just like I said."And he went upstairs, and—he went upstairs and got changed, and he came back down a few minutes later, and he started cussing, "Brad, they haven't effing called this, blah blah blah blah."And he was yelling at me, and I was like, "Sir, they're going to call it any minute.They're going to call it any minute.I promise you, the data is we need to go.It's time for you to go give the speech."

And Bannon then gets a phone call.He picks up the phone, because, you know, they know all the reporters.I don't know any reporters.I'm not a politico.And they get a call from the AP, and Bannon is like, "Hello," and like AP says they're calling it, and Bannon says, "Yep, the AP's called it."And Trump goes ear to ear, smile.And he goes, "I can't believe it."

And so we all start hustling over to the Hilton, and we get all backstage, and we're all back there.I mean, it was like a petting zoo for Donald Trump.Everyone's like super tight around him, and I'm just kind of—I'm like two layers back.I'm tall enough; I can look over because I'm 6’8”.And I'm like, looking over everybody, and I see the call come in from Hillary Clinton.She concedes.

And then Trump comes over and gives me a half hug and says, “Good job, Brad, good job."And then he looked to me and goes, "Don't stand next to me on stage.I effing mean it."And so then we all get in the line to go out, and I'm at the very, very back, and he turns around; the last thing he says before he accepts—goes out and accepts that he won, he turns around, he goes, "Brad, I effing mean it.Do not stand next to me on stage.You'll make me look short."

And that's election night.

And then I went around New York for, like, till 4:00 in the morning; I just walked New York in this weird cloud of not getting tired.My adrenaline, the emotions.It was the—you know, I'd only worked on one political campaign in my life.I was running it for the most part when it comes to outside of comms.I was running the marketing.I was running the budget with [Steve] Mnuchin.I was running all the advertising.I was making the choices of where we targeted the money.I had run the digital campaign.I had done the digital fundraising.The only thing I didn't do was the comms, the surrogates, and manage Trump.

So you could essentially say there was a couple of us running the campaign.And this was the first campaign I'd ever run, and I just won the presidency.

Did you see a change come over him?

No, not then. Not then, no.He was humble, if anything, that evening.That event has nothing to do but to humble you.It's now the power of the world.And so, I think everyone was shocked but me, honestly.I wasn't shocked.I believe in math so much and statistical probability; it's how I've had my success.It's all math, and the math was there.Everyone else was believing their emotions, and I was staring at the math.

And I mean, in that speech he gives that night, it is, for Donald Trump, is a humble speech.

I don't think you can feel much else other than humility in that moment.I mean, he just went from businessman to the most powerful man in the world, so I didn't see anything other than that.When he kind of gave me a half hug, he's not a big toucher.Neither am I.Actually I'd probably get weirded out if he had fully hugged me also.So he kind of gave me—you know, he would have had his face in my chest.It would have been awkward and not a good photo moment.So he kind of gives me a half hug, and, you know, I respect that.And he told me I did a good job.And he knew at that moment that that argument we had had in the kitchen, I was right; he was wrong.

Learning Curve for Trump

… But is it a learning curve for Donald Trump as he comes into Washington that you'll see over the years of his presidency, of learning about Washington and politics?

Well, yeah.I think the first six months he learns about the bureautic [sic] state that 95% of the employees within the federal government are Democrats, and the reason that is, is because Republicans want less government, and Democrats love programs; they want more government.So if you work in the government, which one do you want, less or more?

So the incentive structure for Democrats who work in the government is to have more Democrats together so you can have more government, because government gives you safety.One of the three major human fears are exile, pain and poverty.So you don't want poverty, you work in the government, you want more government.

So everybody around Donald Trump that works in the government is going to go, “I don't want this guy here; he might get rid of my job.”I mean, I don't know if people noticed, but Washington, D.C., votes like 95% Democrat.So when a Republican shows up and says, “Let's reduce the size of federal government,” what do they hear?They hear, “My job is now possibly gone, and I’ve got to move somewhere and find a job.Eff that guy.”So do you think you're going to be in the White House, thinking maybe your job will be removed and actually do a good job?No, you're not.

So the first thing Trump figured out was that the deep state, which is just another term for the bureautic [sic], the bureaucracy—

Bureaucratic?

Bureaucratic state—sorry, the bureaucracy is that they don't want him, so they slow the mechanics down.They make the wheels that have been turning slooowww down to make Trump look bad.That's state one.

State two: Then you get a whole bunch of people that don't know how government works because they're coming in from political jobs and other things, and they don't know what to do, and they don't want conflict.And so they kind of sit on top of it, and now you get this sludge of a machine moving around.And Trump's wanting to move fast, do things.And those go in conflict, which caused the first conflicts really in the White House. …

And the third way to do that is how long it takes to get everyone appointed.So what they do is they take Trump and they just squeeze all of his mechanics to keep power.And this doesn't come from the left; this comes from the moderate right, because the moderate right is in complete fear of Trumpism and what will be the future of—which we now see now with Mike Johnson being speaker of the House—this conservative movement taking over the party.And what they want to do is slow Trump down so much to make him have to listen to them to get anything done.

And that's how—that's Trump's first thing.He wanted to be the guy: “I trust you.We're on the same—you’ve got an R, I’ve got an R; you’ve got an R, I’ve got an R.You can see the American people behind me.You see the power of my Twitter account.Let's all work together.”

And they convince him, “Well, you're so powerful, sir, you can get health care done,” which was a gigantic nightmare.What Trump should have done is got the taxes reduced and done all of the different things that he had promised first.

But I 100% believe that was a setup.And you could see it now in retrospect, all of the grindings of all the things around Trump to isolate Trump into needing the bureaucracy and needing other elected officials.

And Trump eventually sees this and says, “I'm going to get rid of all of you in '22,” and says, “I'm turning on you.”He would occasionally bring [Sen. Mitch] McConnell back because it's hard not to have him, but you can see the other powers where he had the ability to put people in the executive branch or the power to put someone into the Supreme Court, he was actually much more powerful and able to do that quickly because the mechanics of the bureaucracy couldn't stop it as much.

So if you actually really look at it from that standpoint, you see that Trump, Trump was in this tight cage with all these ropes pulling on him, and you're like, “Why isn't he getting these things done?”He's tied up in every direction.It's not like the president of the United States can just run around Washington, D.C., and slap people on their desk and tell them to work.

Trump and Charlottesville

One of the moments of conflict between the Republicans in Congress and the president early on is Charlottesville, when a lot of Republican leaders, people like Jeff Flake and others, are very critical.

Oh, my God.

Do you have any insight into what, how that went down?

Look, I think this was the first experience, in my opinion—again, I wasn't in the White House comms—where they lost the framing war.And so the—most politics is about framing, and so the framing war was Trump gave a speech, and that was the first time they took a chunk, put color around it, and they changed what it meant.And whether Trump said it artfully or colorfully or what—and what I believe he meant—any sentence, almost ever, can be construed and conflated with a bad value and adapted into a new framing.

I think at this point is when the White House really saw, and Trump saw, that he didn't have an army of people to help fight bad framing.You know, it's like—and then they reacted to it in a bad way.It's like [former President Richard] Nixon: "I'm not a crook."That's the worst job in presidential history of reacting to framing that you're a crook: "I'm not one," right?

And so I think what happened in Charlottesville in the White House was their reaction to the framing was to say, “We're not racist,” which was a horrible way to frame this.And I think they got caught over their skis on that one.And I think whether or not what you think or what it is, is human perception is how you're being told the story, not what the story really is, and I believe that that was the first real loss of a significant framing fight.And I think that's when Trump said, “You know what?I'm going to do more myself when it comes to the conversation, because you guys can't deal with these things.”That's what I saw from the outside.I was not inside of that, but I saw it as kind of one of the first real large framing.

I don't really think we ever lost the Russian framing story.I think that the left really, at the end, owned that.And I think only the far-left people who were never going to vote for conservatives or Republicans believe it.I think last time I saw a report, like 80-some percent of Americans don't believe it anymore.So, you know, it's one of those conspiracies.

Now, do they think Russia had something to do with it?Yes, because they spent like $12,000 or whatever.We spent 400 million.But like, I already had that argument with PBS.

Trump Found His Footing by 2019

… You were talking about Trump being bound.That he comes in, he's got people from the RNC around him. He's constrained.He's got messaging problems around Charlottesville.What is he, by the end of his presidency?Has he unbound himself?Has he figured out a different way—as you're observing it from the campaign by that point? ...

I think by 2019, the president had really found his—he had taken the training wheels off and was at a full run—or full bicycle mode.I think he had figured out comms and really, with the team, had really figured out how to handle the daily briefings.I think by '19, he had really figured out how to message and deal with the House and the Senate.I think he had had a lot of victories with the Supreme Court.

… He had found his footing, and after they got rid of the general as the chief and we had [Mick] Mulvaney and then [Mark] Meadows, I think he really started to see a team that believed in him.I think they had really torn out some of the bad mechanics.They had got their appointees by then.It was his White House by '19.And I think that's when you really think—you see things start to flourish.You see Trump's popularity skyrocket.

When I walked into the Oval in—you know, I had a full campaign team running now, so we had outside mechanics.I was almost like a—one of those mechanical suits around a human, you know, like from a movie.And I was like an exoskeleton.And I was like, we were firing with them.We were running ads.I ran a Super Bowl ad that was extremely successful that raised millions of dollars.

And by February of 2020, we'd come into a poll, and I show him in the Oval, and he was winning in a landslide.We were winning states like New Mexico, Nevada.We were close within the margin of error in Oregon.He had a battle map that no one had seen since [Ronald] Reagan.That is February of 2020.

And I remember going home that night and reading the first real news story, of seeing the pictures coming out of China and Italy and other places of COVID, and I started scratching my head, and I was like, this thing could take all of this down, and it's unfightable, because humans are scared to die, and this could just change every single message to one in one day.And it's incredible.

And within a few months, his polling was in—it was in the bucket.I don't know how any president would have survived that.It was nearly an impossible framing argument: I'll keep you alive and make you happy and not worry, because your fears are death, exile, poverty and pain.And COVID had, like, three out of four.It actually had all four.All four human fears were wrapped up into COVID, and how do you beat that?You can't, because the president can't go out with a lightsaber and take down all the COVID viruses.So there was no winning it.

And within months, he had gone from one of the most popular presidents to—one of the best Electoral College vote maps in years to one of the worst going into the election, just within four or five months.

Let's go back for one second to that meeting in February.What is his reaction when you tell him where things stand with the campaign?I mean, is he surprised?

He was happy.No, I think he knew we were winning, and he just—it was an affirmation and reassurance that he was doing the right thing.When I showed him, like, at that point, he was like 330, 340 electoral votes.I mean, he was crushing it.And it was the best polling I'd ever seen since the day I got there.

I've heard that you've said to him that he was losing on personality, but winning on the economy?Is that true?What does that mean?

Well, I think that's a difference of unfavored versus—look, there's a lot of statistics that presidents are judged on.What I was saying was, the economy was doing so well that with Hispanic voters and Black voters, and there were some demographics, that the economics were so good and their lives were so good, they could turn a blind eye to some of his personality things, some of the framing issues that were being used against him personality-wise and some of his off-the-cuff comments on Twitter, that they were turning a blind eye to because life was so good.And people were starting to accept, all right, this guy has some flaws, but there's a lot he's doing good for me.

And I had that comment with him multiple times.Not just me.Everybody in the White House would reiterate to him, “Why do you got to attack an NBA player's father over something like—you know, what are you doing?”But Trump's a puncher, and he's a boxer.Trump would only get in trouble when he punched down or punched dead people, and those are a couple of mistakes he would make, and they would always show statistically negative in his data.But it's a choice he made, and he was president.

COVID Takes Down Trump’s Presidency

Yeah, it's interesting throughout, because I think a lot of what was being reported at the time were the tweets, were the comments.That was filling cable news.

Oh, of course.

But you were seeing something else.

Well, I hate to tell cable news this, but they're not in charge, and whatever they say doesn't stick.And honestly, they're only a fraction now, less than 20% of the market now.Most of the news market by 2020 is social media content creators.They're 70%—like, I mean, they're at 60-plus.I don't know what they were in '20, but they’re three-to-one with their ability to spread a message.And at that point, Trump was winning the economic message, the changing culture messages.The only thing cable news had left to attack Trump was his personality at that point, until the big, bad, evil COVID shows up.And when big, bad COVID shows up, they can change all of their framing into a man who doesn't care, a man who doesn't care about your life, your four fears.And that was a perfect framing to take Trump down because Trump was a strong-arm man who was going to fix our country, and now we want Grandma to take over and lead us through our sickness.And we don't want to fight right now; we want to get healthy.

And COVID was so exaggerated that it nearly destroyed the economics of the world.Not that it wasn't a real disease and not that people didn't die, but the amount of pressure put into it, because they knew it would take down Donald Trump and use it for political leverage I think will go down in history as one of the most dangerous opportunist things that's ever happened to humans.And I think the long-term devastation of mental health, drugs, alcoholism, kids' educations, deaths occurring from poverty because of the actions taken will be some of the most drastic, damaging things that have happened, and most all in the vein of political power.

How early in it did you have to go back and say, “Remember all those polls I showed you?This threatens—” Was that a conversation you had with him?

Well, you've got to remember back then—we have technology now to do this easier and cheaper, but back then it would cost me about a million dollars to really know the pulse of America, so this is not something you do every day.And you could run tracking polling and kind of see stuff, and I could keep telling him, “Things are getting better,” and it would bounce around sometimes based off the week's news, but for the most part, it wasn't until summer that I knew it was really bad.And then I tried to kind of have an intervention, bring in all the people that were key around him and tell him, “We’ve got to change.”I didn't try to tell him how to change.I just told him, “What we're doing is not working, and if the election was held today, we'd lose.”And he didn't like hearing that.He got very upset with me.That was the last time I ever was in the Oval Office.

Let's talk about some of the things that we were seeing on the outside, like the president leaving the press conferences and sort of those famous moments.What was he doing there?What was the effect of—I mean, you know these things now, about bleach and lights and we shouldn't be testing.All of those things that are again running in campaign ads this time, what was the effect of those?

I don't think those matter.People like to take small amount of facts and make huge assumptions out of it.It's a very human characteristic.Essentially, people were home-stuck, bored, running out of Netflix, thought they were losing their jobs, unhappy.And I'm sorry, I don't care if you're Mary Poppins, you're going to lose your support index.So it doesn't matter who's in that spot.It's not about him, not about what he said.It was about an entire world scared to be sick [and] die, and the fear.

I'm still going to get on airplane tonight and people going to have their masks on still.I mean, it's four years.And we've changed an entire culture over this.And those words were blips, little teeny dots.It wasn't him saying the bleach; it wasn't him saying this.It was the overarching entire feeling of a nation, that we're America the strong; why are we hiding at home?

And I think other than 10% of the population, 90% were following along because they do what America says.But they're like, why are we doing this?And I think that was what really cost it.

But look, no one will ever know.God knows.Back then, we didn't have the technology we have now to really track why.The technology now has gotten a lot better.We can actually listen to hear why using artificial intelligence and the things we understand now.Back then, we could only listen to very short snapshots at very broad swaths of the American people and say, “What's changed since last time I asked you?”Now we can actually track if a candidate says something, we can say, “This impacted it.”

So now when Donald Trump says something or someone in the news says something, I can actually go to Trump and say, “This didn't matter,” or, “This did matter.”And that's changed.So in 2020, I can't answer that question.I don't think anyone that answers that question truly knows.The technology didn't exist then; only God knows.

But I believe, in my gut, from the years of doing this, is that when people aren't happy, they want change.People are happy, they don't want change.That simple.And I still haven't met anybody that says, “2020 kicked butt; I loved it.”I don't think I'm going to get that. ...

So just to be clear, up until that summer, over the spring as things are happening, there is a tension between you and the White House about how they're approaching things as far as COVID goes.

I don't think there was a tension.I don't even think they were listening to me.I couldn't legally go in the White House from March 13 until like, for two months.Remember, I was not a government employee, so I'm not seen as critical.I can only call Trump on the phone, which is not the best way to work with anybody, let alone the president of the United States.I couldn't show him documents; I couldn't show him a thing.And it wasn't until the rapid test machine is invented, where I would have to go downstairs into the medical office at the White House.They would stick this thing up my nose every day, which did not feel great, as some of us remember, and then I'd have to sit for two hours and wait for the test results, and then I was allowed to go in for that day.

And then I couldn't—the seats were moved back; I couldn't give him pieces of paper.I mean, it was crazy.It reminded me of 1992 AIDS.Like, I couldn't play basketball if somebody had a cut, and you're cut from the game.We were in "Everyone's going to die" mode, right?And so I've gone through two of those in my life now.

And it made it very hard to operate.And Trump was ready to get out of those bounds, and he forced me and forced the campaign to do things that were not smart because he wanted to break the bounds.He was back to where—he was back to where he was year one, but even worse.Now they put him in a metal coffin, and all he had was a Twitter account and a TV camera.That's all he could do.And it's not a great place for a president to be.And I think eventually I paid the price because I couldn't fix that for him, and no one could fix that for him.And I think the only thing that was going to fix that was time.

Let's talk about what I think you're alluding to, which is the rallies in Oklahoma.The president, as I read it, and tell me if this is true, really wanted return to rallies, and this was a point of discussion if not contention with the campaign?

Yeah, I always said in the room that night, I said, "We don't know if anybody will show up," and he goes, "You don't know that."And I said, "All right, we'll do it."I picked the best location I could in the most conservative state with the governor of the most—and this rally will forever live in my nightmares.I told all America to sign up, and we got hundreds of thousands, millions signups.I knew there was fake signups coming in; I'm not stupid, you know.They were coming in from blocked phone numbers and tweets, text messages and places that were 1,000 miles away.We knew that, area codes.

I was convinced though there was no way it would be empty.So I took the PR move, which in retrospect that looks dumb, but it could have looked smart if something else wouldn't have happened.It was catastrophic events that led to this.And I tweet out, "A million people signed up."I knew 800,000 of them were fake.I didn't care.They're going to frame me as saying I was an idiot, blah, blah, blah.Fine, whatever.Anybody that knows me knows I'm not an idiot.I don't really care what they think about me.

And then the real damage was, the night before the rally, the Secret Service and the Army got scared that somebody would bring a bomb in a car.So they removed, like, 10,000 parking spots and didn't allow anyone to park anywhere for five miles.They added a second outer boundary.So I call President Trump, and I say, "It looks like Beirut in the '80s.”I'm like, "You can't get here."It wasn't the fact that people didn't want to come.You couldn't physically get there.It was literally I think for most people, it would end up being a seven-mile walk.

And then what happened, about three hours before we saw thousands of people coming, Black Lives Matter show up in protest in the outer ring.They start pushing on the thing.The Army and the police are running the outer ring, and the Secret Service is running the inner ring.Well, the Army and the police aren't in communications with the Secret Service.

So at the beginning when this happens, the Army is like trying to hold them back.Radio somebody in the Secret Service says, “We're closing it down because of fear.”This was only closed down for about 15 minutes, and they reopened it, though the Secret Service never reopens the inner boundary and thousands of people get stuck in the outer boundary, in between the outer boundary and the inner boundary.

Even people who had walked five miles, if those people would have been able to come in, we would have easily filled the arena.The problem—but if you're explaining in a world, you're losing.So what I'm doing right now is losing by explaining.And it doesn't matter what the facts are.The fact is, it was empty.

On top of that, I got exposed to COVID by multiple people, and then all the doctors around the president say, “You can't see him now,” because multiple people tested positive that morning that I had dinner with the night before, even though I never tested positive during that whole period of time.And so I was not allowed to get on the plane with the president to explain what happened on the way home, and so the catastrophic set of domino events for something I didn't really want to do anyway, I knew would probably fail, was a failure.

I don't think in any way that's why Trump got rid of me.I think Trump knew.It didn't help, obviously.I think mostly what Trump wanted to do was he needed to reset the news cycle, and he thought a change from me to somebody else would reset the news cycle that the campaign was invigorated and ready to go again.But it didn't change it at all, because campaigns don't win elections; campaigns turn out voters.Presidents win elections.

… You have said that in the summer, I think it might have been in June, that you had pushed for them to take a different approach on COVID—or push the president to. What were you asking for that he didn't want to do?

I'm not going to get into exactly what I said, but the overarching approach I took was to get people around him to say, “Look at the data please.It doesn't need to be my idea.Somebody needs to change the idea.This is not working.”And that was what the data was showing me.I was never the guy to go with the gut.I would show data, and my data would back up what I said.I would say, “What we're doing is wrong.”

So when I got the full data from Tony Fabrizio, who was our pollster at the time, and Tony clearly showed that we were wrong on our framing of what we were doing on COVID, the on-stage presentations from Trump were being wrong, were not helping, it was time to change direction.I presented that, and I hoped for direction.

Now, within weeks I'm gone, and maybe they did change direction.I can't tell you.I can just tell you that's what—my last "throw myself onto the hot coals" was, “We're losing, and we're losing because of how we're handling COVID.”

When Voters are Unhappy They Vote for Change

… You mentioned the Black Lives Matter protesters outside that rally, which reminded me, that was such a crazy year, 2020.

That's what I told you.Awesome year.

From the perspective of the campaign, the way that the president responded in clearing Lafayette Park, how did you think that that affected?Were you involved in any of that?

I don't think—none of that was negative.Never showed in the polling as negative.I have never seen a poll where the American people like protesting and burning things down and running over things.Americans like safety.They like status quo.They like paychecks.They like having their house, their cars.They like their kids to be safe. …

And so for some reason, the media likes to think that this means they're fighting back against the system.None of that was successful.Do people feel bad when someone gets killed by a police officer?Do people believe that the police officers need better training and stuff?Yes.Do people think that we need less police officers and defund them?No.

So they were doing a lot of things that were helping Trump at the same time.It was a contrast.The Defund Police was a boost to Trump.The problem was, the master framing that everyone's paying attention to, the 88% issue is COVID.If COVID doesn't exist and they do Defund Police in the summer of 2020, Trump wins it, wins like Nixon and Reagan.It was the worst political move for the left.Most of riots and everything that happened, the contrast was that everyone was so scared about COVID.And the chaos was just so out of control, and because of COVID, people felt like they couldn't prevent these things from happening.

So it just caused a whirlwind of problems that just caused the entire electorate to be depressed and want change.So the more they get depressed, the sadder they get, the more they're not happy, the more they want change.This is what happens in 2008 with [former President George W.] Bush and the wars, two wars, multiple thousands of our kids dead.All the problems of the Bush era, they would never find weapons of mass destruction.What do they do?Change. [Former President Barack] Obama.

Then you get to 2016.They're sick of Obamacare.They're sick of all the liberal policies.They want, again, they want change.Donald Trump.You know, this is an effect.COVID: We don't like it; we don't like it; we're not happy; we want change.You see this all around the world.

And so you can't take a thing that Trump did here or a thing here and say, “Oh, that's it.”That's not how the world works.Go to your wife and try, “Oh, you like me only because this one thing I've ever done.”That's not how it works.Like, that's not how people measure things.But they do measure their happiness based on the overarching environment, and we look at our top leader as a choice to change that.And we'll say, “You know what?Let's give somebody else a run.”

And there are certain people that are very behind their leader, and we see that in the MAGA.We see that with Trump.And he has this huge base, one of the largest bases ever.Biden has his people.

But the real people that make the decisions are less than 15 million people in like seven cities that really choose our president.And they mainly live in suburbs of seven major cities, and they're educated, and they listen to about 1% of news a month.And what they vote for is how they feel, not what they saw on CNN with a deep report from Dana Bash about this thing or that past thing.What they do is, they feel it when they're with their friends and family, and they're all talking about how much stuff sucks, and they go to the voting booth, they go, “You know what?I'm ready for change.”

To think that 240 million people really choose our presidents is ridiculous.We're not a democracy.We're a federal republic, and a handful of states choose our presidents.And it's been like that since 1984.And you know, it's a misnomer to think that some drastic news story changes the vote.What changes the vote is when 14 million, 15 million suburban women and men think their kids are going to die going to school.That's reality.

Parscale Parts Ways with Trump

Because I've read accounts of it, how tough was it between you and Donald Trump—you’d been involved in the political campaign since 2015—as you were pushed down inside the campaign?Was that a tough moment between the two of you?

He didn't tell me himself.He never called me.So I've said that on interviews before.I was upset, but I'm over it now, and I moved on, and I'm supportive of him and what he's doing.And I care about the country, and that's what matters most.I was disappointed, but it's a job.And I made the job too personal, and I now take it as a policy to not take anything personal anymore.And so I moved on.

What do you mean too personal?

I said that—not to take things personal.It wasn't personal; it wasn't about me.And so it was about him and what he wanted to do and the decision he thought he was going to make, and he made that choice, and that's his choice to live with; it's his life, so.And I've moved on since, and I've built some successful businesses, and my technology is very supportive of what the president does for '24, and it's the technology keeps him from getting cancelled.I made my mission is to stop cancel culture.I believe it's the disease, it is the virus of America.It is the worst thing that will—it will be the number one thing that leads us towards civil unrest and the separation.

Cancel culture is a disease.And I believe it's the disease of both sides, and it's becoming a cancer.If it becomes more than a cancer and it becomes this vile cancer, even worse, it could cause damaging things for America.That's why we have the First Amendment.Cancel culture is at, in its essence, at the odds of the First Amendment.

After the election, I don't know if you're plugged in or not—

Two more, man.I’ve to go here soon.So make them good!Make them good!

The first one is about the after-election period and as the president—

So you're not going to ask me anything about 2018-19.You just want '16 and '20, huh?

'16 to '20.

Well, you skipped a couple years.

Yes, we did.Especially with only a couple questions, I do want to get that post-election period.I don't know if you're in touch or if you're watching or what your impressions are as you're seeing—

You’re talking about Jan. 6 stuff?

I'm talking about leading up to that, right after the election.

… Look, this was the hardest time of my life.It was the hardest time in my life.I went from working 1,000 hours a week to zero.It caused me and my wife to finally start talking about the loss of our children and to really—to finally soak in what crazy few years we had.We hadn't even mentioned their passing until this period, never even mentioned their names.We had not got proper counseling; we hadn't done proper things, and it turned into a nightmare scenario of pain and agony and not sleeping.

At the same time, the press had really made up—there was a lot of made-up allegations about me and investigations.There were multiple threats at my home.I was getting death threats.I had armed guards with me everywhere.It was a living nightmare.And I stopped sleeping and eventually really just don't even remember towards the end.I just—my blood pressure was 180 over 120; they put me in the hospital multiple times.I just—the tension was so much that it was almost unbearable.And I was doing it all alone because the president had thrown me alone.I had lost the campaign.I had lost any mechanism to fight back.And the world wanted to make sure I never came back.And they got close.And it took me—my mental health really declined to a place where I couldn't sleep.

And so the text messages on Jan. 6?

Well, Jan. 6, I was watching the thing, and I told my friends I thought this was—I didn't think it was smart.I since think what they've done is over-prosecute, overdo it all.But yeah, I didn't think Jan. 6 was smart.I think that, in my opinion, I wish he would have just moved on and become the senior politician and say, “This is corruption, and fight it.”

But look, I also think it's overblown now.And so now, answering this question in the context of the framing of the event, on the day of, I'm like, “Yeah, get him off stage.This is not helping.”But, you know, it's hindsight.

A few weeks later, I had changed my opinion pretty drastically on it. ...

Let me just clarify one thing on this, because you wrote about it was a sitting president asking for civil war and feeling guilty for helping him to win.Did you feel that at the time?Do you feel that now?

I don't feel that now.Look, it was an emotional day.I'd had an emotional time.I think the best thing for America right now is for Trump to win again.Some people will probably be upset I say that.I think it's right.Trump—do I think everything any human being has ever done is perfect? No.Do I think what he did every day that day was perfect? No.Would I handle it different? Yes.Does it change my support? No.

It's unfortunate my private text messages in an emotional moment got out.If everyone's text messages were dumped all over the world, people would kind of think some of the crazy things they would say every once in a while.I didn't say that publicly.What I did say publicly on Twitter was, they need to get out of the Capitol and they need to stop, and I do believe that, and I didn't think it was right, what was happening.I made that public.My private feelings are my private feelings.

Look, there are other days where I was really mad at Donald Trump, and I went back to work, and I hugged him.You know?They make Horrible Bosses, the movie, for a reason, right?Like, everyone in this country has had a day where they're mad at their boss and probably said something they don't really mean.So unfortunately, they searched through my phone or other people's phones and they find a text message.“Oh, you didn't like him this day; tell us why.”And you can take any one little snapshot of time and try to make a big assumption out of it.And it is what it is.I can't—unfortunately, my life has been one with not much privacy.

Well, thank you for clarifying it and for giving the context of that, which I think does explain a lot.I know you're running out of time.

Well, we could do this for days.I just—I have to just make sure I get to the airport.You've got a lot of footage here.You have a lot of footage here.

You've been great.Two things I want to ask about.Do you visit the president at Mar-a-Lago now?

Very infrequently.I work through the staff now.I had dinner—or not really drinks, Coca-Colas with him a couple of months ago and sat and cleared the air and a couple of times we've done that.We've met a couple of times since.But I'm outside now.My company and the technology I've invented is heavily involved, but, as of this filming, I am—the world changes.So in case anybody watches this later and says, “Hey, he's more involved,” at this point, I'm not ready for a third thing.

And I'm closing on 50 now, and my mental health and my family is very important.And the last two times were very hard on my family.My daughter had to change schools because of people going after her because of her last name.My last name is very unique.I lost family I haven't talked to since.It was very destructive to my father's mental health.We don't have—we have lots of arguments over it, and it was extremely destructive to my family.It was a lot of time on the road.Barely home.Destructive to my marriage, destructive to my faith, not being able to go to church and lots of things.It's a very destructive process to yourself personally.It's a young man's game, or a very short window of time.And I've been doing it for a long time.I imagine I'm the longest single employed person from a campaign in history, so it's not easy.

The question we ask everybody on the film is, what is the choice in November?It’s the title of the film.What's the choice that's facing voters in November?

I think the choice is America is—do you want a small group of elites to control the rest of your life and the rest of your kids' lives, or do you want to have someone go in, like Donald Trump, and break up the elites and give the power back to your local officials so that you have self-governance and control of your own life?And I think that's the choice in '24.It's not about two people.It's about two types of way to live: live with the most powerful person being the person closest to you, or the most powerful person being the most furthest away from you.And that's the choice in 2024.

It's not about Trump.It's not about Biden.It's about the country that you want.And if you want elitism, choose Biden.And if you want freedom and your local officials to matter more, then choose Trump.

That's the choice.And try not to think about the personalities.

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