Hater Eraser
Veteran
Brad Parscale was on the phone with President Donald Trump and top White House officials in mid-February when someone on the line asked the campaign manager what worried him the most.
“Sir, regardless, this is coming. It’s the only thing that could take down your presidency,” Parscale told the president.
Trump snapped.
“This fukking virus,” Trump asked dismissively, according to a person with direct knowledge of the exchange, “what does it have to do with me getting reelected?”
That was exactly the attitude Joe Biden expected from the president. And Biden saw his task as unambiguous.
Create a contrast. Follow the scientists whom Trump ignored. Wear a mask, halt public events and reinvent campaigning to avoid putting people in harm’s way.
When Trump resumed mega-rallies in the midst of the pandemic – a move the Biden team viewed as reckless and unthinkable – the campaign was stunned by the questions it faced.
“Reporters were asking us why we weren’t doing that?” Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn said of Trump’s rallies. “‘Why aren’t you traveling more? Aren’t you a bad campaign?”
Biden was ridiculed for holing up in his basement. He was second-guessed by pundits and even his own allies. It was evidence of a Democratic Party consumed by paranoia that the reality TV star — seemingly impervious to scandal and immune to the normal laws of politics — would manage to outmaneuver them once again.
This account of the 2020 presidential campaign is based on conversations with more than 75 people in and around both campaigns. It is the story of two candidates with completely divergent views on how the nation would respond to a deadly virus outbreak — and acted accordingly, setting up a stark choice for voters.
Among the findings:
• Senior campaign and GOP officials vented that Trump’s finance team, led by former Fox TV host and Donald Trump Jr. girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, underperformed and was an HR nightmare. Trump couldn’t compete with Biden’s small-dollar fundraising machine, and some donors were horrified by what they described as Guilfoyle’s lack of professionalism: She frequently joked about her sex life and, at one fundraiser, offered a lap dance to the donor who gave the most money.
GMB IS A POLITICAL PARTY ..
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