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    The Surprising Places in NYC Where Trump’s Support Grew

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    Electoral College Results

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    Biden Transition Updates

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    For Trump, Pardons as an Expression of Grievance

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    Electoral College Results

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    What Does President-Elect Biden Owe to Black Voters, Communities?

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesElectoral College ResultsBiden’s CabinetInaugural DonationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNews AnalysisBlack Voters Want President Biden to Take a Cue From Candidate BidenIn his victory speech, the president-elect said of Black voters: “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” Many of those voters are watching to see what he does in office.Joseph R. Biden Jr. with his wife and granddaughter at Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, S.C., in February. He won the state’s primary later that month.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York TimesDec. 24, 2020Updated 4:17 p.m. ETNORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. went to the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina in late February, before the state’s presidential primary, and listened as the Rev. Isaac J. Holt Jr. delivered a message of encouragement.“You’re going to win,” Mr. Holt said he told Mr. Biden privately, a political prophecy that was fulfilled in the coming days.Now Mr. Holt, the pastor of one of Charleston’s largest Black congregations, has another message for Mr. Biden as he plans for his incoming administration: “Biden owes us. And we have not forgotten.”Black voters have a political marriage of convenience with the Democratic Party. They are at once the party’s most solid voting demographic and deeply frustrated by the lack of systemic change its politicians have delivered for them.In South Carolina, the state that helped propel Mr. Biden to the Democratic nomination and where about half of the Democratic electorate is Black, voters complain of receiving campaign promises from politicians while they are running but not being prioritized once they are elected.There are similar grievances among voters in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia, hubs of general-election campaigning in key swing states, who have grown used to the silence that follows presidential election years.In their telling, attention quickly shifts to midterm races in gerrymandered, Republican-leaning congressional districts, and the Black voters who helped Democrats ascend to the White House are sometimes discarded. Their issues are too divisive. Their needs are too great.Mr. Biden has insisted that this time will be different, and people like Mr. Holt are taking him at his word. Last month, in his victory speech after becoming president-elect, Mr. Biden cited Black voters specifically, alluding to those who rallied around him in South Carolina after his primary campaign flopped in other early-voting states.“Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African-American community stood up again for me,” Mr. Biden said. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”But who defines political priorities for Black voters, and what does it mean to have their back?Leading Black politicians, civil rights leaders, activists and many of the same South Carolina church leaders Mr. Biden leaned on to turn his campaign around all said in interviews that it was important to address the coronavirus pandemic. But they also raised issues that ran the gamut of liberal policy initiatives, from investing in small businesses and historically Black colleges and universities to tackling student debt and climate change.Many also pushed back against the singular focus on racial representation that has dominated debates over Mr. Biden’s transition team and cabinet picks. Having a cabinet that reflects the racial diversity of America is good, they said. But they added that Mr. Biden’s legacy on race would be judged on his willingness to pursue policy changes that address systemic racism — a standard he has set for himself.Mr. Biden has sought to build a diverse cabinet with selections like Representative Marcia L. Fudge of Ohio for housing secretary. But many civil rights leaders said action was more important than representation.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times“What he’s got to do, in my opinion, is to depart from the tradition,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, the powerful South Carolina Democrat who is the highest ranking Black member of the House. “What is getting us in trouble in the past is when people get into office, they abandon the platform they ran on” in favor of appeasing Republicans, he said.The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, cited a commitment Mr. Biden had made during a public forum to prioritize eliminating poverty and addressing the concerns of poor people.Live up to that, he said, and a cross-racial section of marginalized Americans, including Black people, will have their lives transformed.“We certainly want to see a cabinet that looks like America. But more important, we want to see a cabinet that works for America,” Dr. Barber said. “And not just the middle class. And not just the so-called working class. But from the bottom up.”In effect, they are asking President Biden to take a cue from candidate Biden. During the primary and general election, and under pressure from activists who cast Mr. Biden as an artifact of the political past, his team embraced a plan for Black Americans called “Lift Every Voice,” which would seek to close the Black-white income gap, expand educational opportunities, invest $70 billion in H.B.C.U.s and reimagine the criminal justice system and policing.Mr. Biden’s selection of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party ticket, was — with the campaign’s encouragement — taken as a symbolic affirmation of these commitments. Former President Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, had to assure white America he would be a president for all races. But Mr. Biden repeatedly asserted that Black communities would get special attention in his administration.The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Dec. 23, 2020, 5:45 p.m. ETLoeffler and Perdue voted for a pandemic bill that Trump, their patron, just trashed. It’s awkward.Trump vetoes a military bill that Congress passed with veto-proof majorities.In an unusual move, a judge temporarily blocked a Trump administration drilling project.Black political leaders believe that the biggest barrier to Mr. Biden’s commitment to address systemic racism is his own instinct for compromise, bipartisanship and deference to the idea of Washington civility. Mr. Biden has consistently restated his belief that congressional Republicans will work with his administration in due time, though some of them continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory and President Trump shows no signs of loosening his grip on the party’s base.“Bipartisanship is how the president-elect and vice president-elect plan to get things done from Day 1,” said Ramzey Smith, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s transition team. “They’ve made it abundantly clear that in order to combat the systemic inequities that Black Americans have faced for generations, it is imperative to work across the aisle and engage with all groups to reach a consensus that doesn’t compromise our principles or priorities.”Some Black leaders who have met with Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris during the transition have been frustrated by this sentiment, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, is one of the few Democrats left who believes that the Republicans who reflexively opposed Mr. Obama’s every action and have been slow to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s legitimacy are simply an aberration.Leaders are asking him to consider unilateral action like executive orders to enact his agenda, claiming that Washington horse-trading has rarely prioritized the needs of Black communities. Mr. Biden has been steadfast: Republicans will come around.“We will see if he’s right, and we’ll see very shortly,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who has met with the Biden transition team. “If he’s not, we’ll also see it very shortly.”She added: “It’s perfectly fine to be hopeful. But certainly you should be fully prepared to pivot and to be effective.”Even vocal allies of Mr. Biden say his ability to rise to the standards he set for himself, particularly when it comes to racial equity and a Black agenda, may rely on his willingness to see Republicans as obstructionists to be overcome, not negotiators to be met at a midpoint.Representative James E. Clyburn’s endorsement of Mr. Biden ahead of the South Carolina primary was viewed as key to his decisive victory in the contest.Credit…Travis Dove for The New York TimesMr. Clyburn, whose well-timed endorsement of Mr. Biden in South Carolina helped ensure his dominance in the state, said Mr. Biden must learn from the mistakes made by previous Democratic leaders, including Mr. Obama.He cited Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland, whom Republicans refused to even grant a hearing, as an example.Republicans “lied to him and told him that if he put up a moderate, they will approve him for the Supreme Court,” Mr. Clyburn said. “They never did it and they never planned to do it.”“I told them at the time that you will be better off putting up an African-American woman for the Supreme Court,” he added. “If you put up a Black woman, she would have an immediate constituency. Make them turn her down. He would have redefined politics in this country, and frankly I think Hillary Clinton would have been elected president.”The Rev. Joseph A. Darby Jr., the senior pastor at Nichols Chapel A.M.E. Church in Charleston and a former leader of the local N.A.A.C.P., said he had been heartened by Mr. Biden’s cabinet choices, including that of retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who would be the first Black man to lead the Defense Department.“Just having new folks at the table is helpful,” Mr. Darby said. “But it’s that plus the substance.”The stakes could not be higher. Black people sit at the intersection of the year’s biggest policy priorities: access to health care, criminal justice and the climate change crisis. Black Americans have been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, dying, being hospitalized and facing economic devastation at disproportionate rates.In Mr. Darby’s congregation, a mother and her child both died from the virus. Mr. Holt’s congregation hasn’t been able to convene since March, just weeks after Mr. Biden spoke from the pulpit as a candidate.Last week, in an interview at his church, Mr. Holt made another of his patented political predictions: If Mr. Biden does not follow through on his promises to Black people — does not make eroding systemic racism a priority in deed, not just words — Republicans will make gains with Black voters.He cited the modest shift toward Mr. Trump in November’s election among some Black voters and the increasingly nonpartisan nature of younger Black people. Those are warning signs, he said.“The party system is not something that fits the Black community as a whole,” Mr. Holt said. “We’re tired of Democrats and we’re tired of the two-party system.”Some of Mr. Holt’s congregants, at a socially distant gathering in the sanctuary they hadn’t visited in months, echoed their pastor’s urgency. Though they expressed confidence in Mr. Biden and said they all voted for him in the primary and general elections, they framed their choice as a call for action rather than a blank check of trust.“He can’t get stuck on healing hearts,” said Shakeima Chatman, 46, a real estate agent. “But he can institute policies and regulation.”What gave them hope: that Mr. Biden was comfortable among Black voters on the campaign trail and the loyalty he showed to Mr. Obama as his vice president.What worried them: that he favorably invoked segregationists in the name of bipartisanship, that he said Black people who did not support him “ain’t Black,” and that he told wealthy donors at a fund-raiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he was elected.For Black communities, it must.“Policies created these disparities,” said Cleo Scott Brown, who is 66. “Policy has to fix it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Así ganó Biden

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    The Surprising Places in New York City Where Trump’s Support Grew

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    Electoral College Results

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    The Republican party has ushered in a dark Christmas, indeed. We deserve better | Hamilton Nolan

    Santa will not be pleased. Not to mention Jesus. That guy is gonna be pissed. When they find out what’s happened here, America is going to be in for a very dark Christmas indeed.I am not one of the unfortunates so poisoned by capitalism’s warped inhalation of the holiday season that they have grown cynical about the entire enterprise. My family takes Christmas very seriously. From a very young age I learned that this time of year was not about orgies of shopping or stewing in your contempt for your far-flung relatives, but rather about putting our dormant innate generosity into practice. The Christmas spirit is love. Our bitter cynicism should properly be oriented not at the Christmas spirit itself, but rather at those who corrupt it.Three hundred thousand Americans have died from Covid this year. Well over 200,000 of them died unnecessarily. Had our government managed this public health crisis in a mature and rational way, the deaths would be a fraction of what they are. Our government chose not to do so. Our leering and stupid leader chose to make the wearing of masks into a defining political issue – not out of necessity, or for any financial gain, or out of adherence to any philosophy, but out of aggressive stupidity, laziness and self-rationalization. Usually, the Republican party screws regular people because someone stands to get rich on it. In this case, it was only because they formed a coward’s puppet line behind an awful leader with a loud voice. In every community in America, there are people lying dead because their elected officials were scared of being tweeted at by a former reality show host.Merry Christmas, America.Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs this year through no fault of their own. Tens of thousands of small businesses, each one representing the dreams and ambitions of a human being and the employment of many others, have failed this year through no fault of their own. The money that our government appropriated to carry all of these people and businesses through this natural disaster ran out months ago, and nothing more has been forthcoming, even as we watch our friends and neighbors sink into bankruptcy and food insecurity and desperation.Many other nations have paid workers to stay home, relieving financial pressures on employers and employees alike. Republicans in Congress have refused to do this, because the stock market has stayed high, and also because they don’t care. Our incompetent and callous Republican leaders have ordered shutdowns without providing an adequate safety net, thus causing predictable public backlash against the shutdowns, which Republicans have been happy to encourage, because it directs public ire away from them and onto public health professionals. Idiocy in the White House has combined with the wealth-worshiping Republican Senate to produce the worst of both worlds: a raging preventable public health disaster and an economic catastrophe from which the very rich have been insulated.Your loved ones can die, your business can collapse, your job can evaporate, your unemployment benefits can dry up, your stimulus checks can disappear, and in return your elected leaders will offer you sneering jokes about masks and lies about who won the election. The rest, they will mostly ignore.Merry Christmas, America.Donald Trump is a vapid and pathetic man controlled in every case by his own worst impulses, but he is not the biggest villain of 2020. Without the entire superstructure of the Republican party behind him – voting for him, campaigning for him, debasing themselves before him, praising his stupid ideas and supporting him politically – he would not be in a position to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. There is a long, straight line that runs from the wink-and-nod racist Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon through the deregulation and union-busting of Reagan and up to the deadly narcissism of Trump. When a political party is willing to tell any lie and demonize anyone in order to protect the right of the rich to have everything, it will eventually find that it has become the home of cranks and fascists. The Republican party has spent decades stoking malignant ignorance in service of greed, and it has now been devoured by it. What afflicts us now is not just a virus, but a national philosophy lovingly tended by many generations of conquerors that prizes avarice and calls it individualism.We are all in this pandemic together. Sickness passes from person to person with no regard for identity. Economic decline seizes every city and state at once. Overwhelming crises like these can be catalysts for unity. Shared pain is also an opportunity for shared love. Suffering so widespread can open everyone’s eyes to the common fate of humanity, and our responsibility to support one another in good times and bad.But that is not what America is getting out of this crisis. We are getting the suffering without the sharing, and the pain without the promise of mutual support. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, a man who told people to love their neighbors and give their wealth to the poor; it is embodied by Santa, a man who rewards generosity with more generosity, and vows to carry gifts to the homes of everyone no matter who they are. And yet the people who are loudest about Christmas – those showing off the biggest tree, carrying the most ostentatious Bible – are the same people who have chosen to allow hundreds of thousands of us to die, rather than do what needs to be done for public health, and have chosen to allow millions of us to sink into poverty, rather than do what needs to be done for public welfare. They have chosen this because they believe that this is the path that will maximize their own power. That is their present to you, and they really don’t care if you like it.Yes, Virginia, there is a “War on Christmas”. But the Republicans are the ones waging it. And the Christmas spirit, I’m sorry to say, is losing. More

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    Brad Parscale Fell From Trump’s Favor. Now He’s Plotting a Comeback.

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBrad Parscale Fell From Trump’s Favor. Now He’s Plotting a Comeback.Mr. Parscale, President Trump’s former campaign manager, was angry after he was demoted last summer, and wanted out of politics. That didn’t last long. He is starting a new political data company.Brad Parscale, President Trump’s former campaign manager, was expert in making campaign messages go wildly viral.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesNellie Bowles and Dec. 24, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETBrad Parscale was sounding upbeat. He has a new company and, he believes, a brighter future.Mr. Parscale, President Trump’s former campaign manager, said he was trying to move on from that bleak Sunday in late September when he made the national newscasts, after police were called to his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. His wife told officers he was inside the house, ranting, acting erratically, with a loaded and cocked gun.Now he is turning to real estate and plans to buy houses and flip them, he said in an interview this month, something he said he was good at. He is also restarting his political consulting firm, Parscale Strategy, and trying to kick off a start-up called Nucleus, to process and analyze data for conservative politicians.“I spent five years developing the only automated web-based ecosystem that connected all our departments and made our campaign the most efficient in history,” Mr. Parscale said. “And now I want to bring this technology to campaigns all around the world who are right of center.”Once a midlevel marketing executive in San Antonio, Mr. Parscale rose to the president’s inner circle and was hailed, somewhat hyperbolically, as the tech genius whose social media savvy won Mr. Trump the 2016 election. Mr. Parscale became expert in making the Trump campaign messages — sometimes gut-churning and cruel, other times patriotic and nostalgic — go wildly viral, and his dark humor seemed in tune with Mr. Trump and his meme-making fan base.But people who know and worked with Mr. Parscale say he grew too enamored with his proximity to power, and naïvely comfortable with his insider status, which rested on the whims of a mercurial president. When he was replaced as campaign manager in July amid questions about his stewardship, particularly his spending decisions, it was an embarrassing blow.In recent phone interviews, Mr. Parscale, 44, said he felt demonized by the left, which accused him of digital dark arts he did not employ, and scapegoated by the right for Mr. Trump’s failed campaign.“They can’t choose: Am I rich or am I poor? Am I dumb or am I smart?” Mr. Parscale said of his political adversaries.He has toggled between frustration that he remains a source of public interest and an inability to stay away from the spotlight. After his personal issues burst into public, he retreated, telling people that he was happy to leave the rat race behind, and that at least he has options because he has money.He said he had not gone into rehab, as had been rumored, and was not getting divorced. But he was angry about how things went down, and wanted to live “off the grid,” away from the glare of high-stakes politics.“I’m done with that industry,” he said last month. “It’s a nasty industry. I’ve always been into homes. That’s where I’ve invested. And I have good taste.”But his initial impulse to jettison politics altogether soon gave way to the gravitational pull of the game: In a conversation a few weeks later, he had changed his mind. He was starting Nucleus. Mr. Parscale was proud of his close relationship with the Trump family.Credit…Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA Serendipitous PairingMr. Parscale’s exit from the Trump campaign could hardly have been more horrifying. A police video from the afternoon of Sept. 27 showed Mr. Parscale — shirtless, barefoot, wearing a baseball hat and holding a beer — as he talked to the police after emerging from his home. A split second later, a police officer tackled him, smashing his shoulder and chest into Mr. Parscale’s hips, driving him to the ground with a thud.A few minutes earlier his wife, Candice Parscale, in a swimsuit and a towel, had shown officers bruises on her arms, the body camera footage shows. She said her husband had caused the bruises, according to the police report. The video made the evening news shows and soon went viral. Mr. Parscale was taken to the hospital and released. His wife later recanted her statements from that day.Had the tables been turned that day and it was not Mr. Parscale who was the subject of the story, perhaps if it were a Democratic operative who had been tackled instead, the video is just the sort of content that Mr. Parscale might have quickly pumped into the news ecosystem, the way he did on countless occasions for Donald J. Trump.The story of how Mr. Parscale came to work for Mr. Trump is serendipity, plus a little of Mr. Parscale’s opportunistic savvy. He was already a successful marketing executive, well known in the business circles of San Antonio, when about ten years ago one of his clients was on a flight next to someone who was about to take a job working for the Trump family. The client jotted contact info on an airplane napkin, and soon Mr. Parscale was looped in to bid on some digital work for the family. He cut his rate to make sure he would get the job.Mr. Parscale and the Trump family clicked, and when the presidential campaign started, he was the obvious choice to handle the website and digital advertising.Another bit of good fortune for Mr. Parscale: He would inherit a data operation from the Republican Party that had been totally overhauled, and he had the perfect candidate to try out the new system. Mr. Trump had limited resources and few data ideas of his own. He did not have a big existing digital team. He just had Mr. Parscale, who had no experience in politics. Mr. Parscale was the Trump campaign’s digital director in 2016, referred to by some as a “secret weapon.”Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressWhat Mr. Parscale had was the trust of the president’s family, and a keen sense of the president’s voice and fondness for discord, which he wasn’t afraid to exploit.His lack of expertise made him especially open to a powerful tool for reaching voters: Facebook. While others spent on television ads and hiring huge teams, Mr. Parscale saw that Facebook ads were cheaper and radically effective at reaching Trump voters. He decided to lean on Facebook for analytics rather than hiring a large team of his own.“What Brad did was say, ‘We’re not going to ever be able to build it, so we’re just going to outsource all this stuff to Facebook itself, and they’ll run our ad campaign,’” said Daniel Kreiss, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina and the author of “Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy.” “That was Brad’s true innovation.”His genius was in making provocative content, editing it into fast-moving clips and testing it quickly to figure out the right tempo and tone. He knew how to select the right music for the video, the right text for the meme (maybe different text in Florida than in Ohio), and then sending it full force into the nation’s bloodstream through Facebook.James Barnes, whom Facebook sent to San Antonio to work with Mr. Parscale, said the campaign tapped into what worked very well on Facebook: messages that stir outrage, fear, panic and a sense of victimhood. That was the message of Mr. Trump’s campaign as well.“A lot of Americans just found Trump appealing and the campaign had relatively good tools to figure out who responded to what,” said Mr. Barnes, who by 2020 had left Facebook and was working for a progressive nonprofit to defeat Mr. Trump. “That was it.”Mr. Parscale pushes back on the idea that Facebook essentially ran the campaign, phrasing it more as a special partnership. “We asked Facebook for a manual, and they provided us a human one, which was extremely helpful,” Mr. Parscale said.He said his particular skill was in harnessing the emotional charge of the Trump campaign, translating the rage and nostalgia into content that would spread.“Americana worked,” he said. “Just Americana. ‘Bring back that America pride’ worked. Pictures of a space shuttle. Half my ads just look like a Fourth of July party with a Vietnam vet. I wasn’t some mad genius.”A surrogate who enjoyed the limelight, Mr. Parscale would take the stage at Trump rallies and throw red MAGA caps into the crowd.Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesA ‘Fetishization’ of Data In the shock of Mr. Trump’s 2016 win, liberals and pundits wanted to know how it had happened and looked toward Silicon Valley. Somehow, they said, Americans must have been tricked into that vote. A mystique grew around Mr. Parscale.“Secret Weapon,” announced CBS News. “Brad Parscale, digital director for Trump’s campaign, was a critical factor in the president’s election. Now questions surround how he did it.”“There’s a fetishization of data that allows normally smart people to stop thinking and accept the words of a digital shaman,” said Ben Coffey Clark, a founding partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive, which advises Democratic campaigns. “Why was Brad so confident? Because he didn’t know any better.”Regardless of how much digital genius was really there, Mr. Parscale’s power grew after 2016.He knew how to navigate the turbulent currents of the Trump family. As Mr. Trump looked ahead to the 2020 election, he chose Mr. Parscale as the 2020 campaign manager. By this time, former colleagues say, Mr. Parscale had developed an inflated sense of his importance. He would tell people that he and Hope Hicks, the president’s close adviser, were part of a small group of nonfamily members on a text chain with the Trump children. Mr. Parscale prided himself on being one of the few people who could tell the president bad news, and that he couldn’t be cut out because of his loyalty.He saw himself as a campaign manager but also something more: a partner to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who was overseeing the campaign from the White House, and he enjoyed the limelight enough that he would take the stage at Trump rallies and throw red MAGA caps into the crowd.Mr. Parscale considered himself as much a part of the president’s inner circle as one could get without being a blood relative, or married to one.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesHis Instagram feed was filled with pictures not of the candidate whose campaign he was running, but of himself, posing for selfies with fans or signing caps with a black Sharpie like the boss.But in the summer, as the campaign stumbled, Mr. Parscale fell out of favor. In a particularly embarrassing moment, teenagers organizing on TikTok reserved more than a million tickets for a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla., that Mr. Parscale had organized, inflating the numbers as a prank. Only about 6,200 people showed up, infuriating the president.At the same time, Mr. Parscale’s spending decisions were increasingly being questioned; the campaign had blown through more than $1 billion since the beginning of 2019, and Mr. Trump still trailed in the polls. At the White House, Mr. Trump was livid about his standing in the polls. Mr. Kushner agreed that a change was needed and supported the decision to elevate Bill Stepien and demote Mr. Parscale.When the end came, it was Mr. Kushner, not the president, who told him that he was being replaced, another blow to Mr. Parscale’s ego.‘I Gave Every Inch’While friends advised Mr. Parscale to make a clean break from the campaign, he chose instead to accept a smaller role. For the Republican National Convention, Mr. Parscale was in charge of video supplements to the program. Working mostly from his Florida home, he became frustrated.In a recent interview on Fox News, Mr. Parscale blamed his enemies in Mr. Trump’s orbit (without naming them) for his downfall.He told the Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum that he was no longer in touch with Mr. Trump. “It’s pretty hurtful,” he said. “But it’s probably just as much my fault as his. I love that family. And I gave every inch of my life to him, every inch.”If the purpose of the interview was to ingratiate himself with the president or his family, it backfired. Mr. Kushner has told White house aides and other allies he thought it was a bad idea. And Mr. Trump, those people said, remains irritated that Mr. Parscale became rich and famous trading off his name.When Mr. Stepien took over as campaign manager, there were discussions about reviewing spending decisions made under Mr. Parscale, but with only about three months left until the election, the decision was made to focus on reining in the budget going forward and not revisiting the past.Mr. Parscale has denied using funds inappropriately and said the Trump family approved all his spending decisions. Current and former Trump officials said they interpreted Mr. Parscale’s re-emergence on Fox News after two months of silence as an attempt to increase the value of the memoir he has talked about writing, and to ingratiate himself with a president who may end up retaining a good deal of influence over the Republican Party in the years ahead. He is also trying to rehabilitate his reputation to better promote his new company.Of the police episode in September, Mr. Parscale said he had been breaking down from stress, anxious about attacks from his own side and still grieving the loss of twin children who died as newborns in 2016.The promotional material for Nucleus is bare-bones, with a few bullet points of description. “A web-based digital infrastructure creates centralized hub for campaign,” one reads. He changed the Parscale Strategies site from a stark photo of his face and beard in profile to a more corporate-looking landing page advertising, “innovative marketing solutions.”For now Mr. Parscale’s political legacy is that he was right about Facebook and that he helped Donald Trump score a stunning victory. Today his campaign tactics — rapidly testing ads to see what gets clicks, pumping funding into Facebook rather than just television — seem obvious.“It’s easier to think the bad ads brainwashed people and that Brad Parscale tricked them,” said Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, an associate professor at Fordham University who is writing a book called “Mythologizing the Data Campaign.” “If you have a dark ad about a migrant caravan but the candidate is also saying that, well, it’s not that secret and dark.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    How Trump's Attack on Relief Bill Has Divided GOP

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Attack on Coronavirus Relief Divides G.O.P. and Threatens RecoveryFrom the campaign trail in Georgia to Capitol Hill, President Trump’s demand for changes to the $900 billion pandemic relief plan upended political and economic calculations.President Trump posted a video on Tuesday night demanding significant changes to the pandemic relief bill and larger direct stimulus checks to Americans.Credit…Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesLuke Broadwater, Emily Cochrane, Astead W. Herndon and Dec. 23, 2020WASHINGTON — President Trump’s denunciation of the $900 billion coronavirus relief deal drove a wedge through the Republican Party on Wednesday, drawing harsh criticism from House Republicans and threatening the delivery of unemployment checks, a reprieve on evictions and direct payments to struggling Americans.His four-minute video on Tuesday night demanding significant changes to the bill and larger direct stimulus checks also complicated his party’s push to hold the Senate with victories in two runoff races in Georgia next month. The Republican candidates he pledged to support went from campaigning on their triumphant votes for the relief bill to facing questions on Mr. Trump’s view that the measure was a “disgrace.”Their Democratic rivals appeared to turn a liability into a political advantage 13 days before the election on Jan. 5, agreeing with the president’s demand for $2,000 direct payment checks and calling for Republicans to accede to his wish. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats prepared to move forward on Thursday with new legislation that would provide the $2,000 checks, daring Republicans to break with the president and block passage of the bill in the House.But the effect on struggling Americans was perhaps the most profound: With no deal signed by the president, some unemployment programs are set to run out this week, and several other critical provisions are to end this month. The uncertainty that Mr. Trump injected into the process came at a perilous moment for the economy, as consumer spending and personal incomes resumed their slides.“Does the president realize that unemployment benefits expire the day after Christmas?” an exasperated Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and one of the key negotiators of the package, wrote on Twitter.It is not clear whether Mr. Trump, who is furious at congressional Republicans who have acknowledged his defeat, would actually veto the package. But given how late it is in the 116th Congress, even refusing to sign it could ensure that the bill dies with the Congress on Jan. 3 and must be taken up all over again next year.The 5,593-page spending package would not only provide relief but also fund the government through September. With his threat, the president raised the prospects of a government shutdown beyond Monday and also jeopardized a promise of swift relief to millions of struggling Americans and businesses.Mr. Trump on Wednesday also made good on his promise to veto a major defense policy bill, in part because it directed the military to strip the names of Confederate generals from bases. That sets up a showdown for next week; when the House returns on Monday for the override vote, it could also vote on another stopgap spending bill to prevent government funding from lapsing.Before the turmoil, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had promised that $600 direct payments from the pandemic relief bill could be distributed as early as next week; that is an untenable timeline without Mr. Trump’s signature. The end to two expanded unemployment programs the day after Christmas could push nearly five million people into poverty virtually overnight, according to an estimate from researchers at Columbia University.Some state labor departments — which administer both state and federal unemployment benefits — are already preparing for the end of the programs because of the delay in reaching an agreement, meaning some jobless workers may temporarily lose their benefits all the same because many states will not be able to reverse course in time to avoid a lapse in payments.Frustration with Mr. Trump boiled over on Wednesday during a private conference call of House Republicans who had loyally stood by the president; many of them had joined a baseless lawsuit to try to overturn the results of the election. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, told members that he had spoken to the president and that he had not yet committed to a veto of the bill.But Mr. McCarthy conceded, “This bill has been tainted,” according to one person on the call.“The bill has been tainted,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California told House Republicans on a private conference call on Wednesday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIn his videotaped statement on Tuesday, Mr. Trump accused lawmakers of putting aid for foreign governments before the needs of the American people.Some lawmakers on the call complained about the pork projects in the spending measure; others chimed in to challenge the characterization of the projects as pork, and one longtime House Republican vented generally about voter perceptions of the package after Mr. Trump’s scathing critique.“I don’t know if we recover from this,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, according to three officials on the call. “We will have a hell of a time getting this out of people’s head.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More