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      Eric Garner’s Mother Endorses Raymond McGuire for Mayor

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsA Look at the Race5 Takeaways From the DebateAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEric Garner’s Mother Backs McGuire for Mayor Over Progressive RivalsGwen Carr said she was endorsing Ray McGuire because his financial background could help him lead New York’s recovery and make the city a “safer place.”In a nearly two-minute ad, Raymond McGuire and Gwen Carr visit the location in Staten Island where her son, Eric Garner, had his fatal interaction with the police.Credit…Ray McGuire for MayorFeb. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the nearly seven years since Eric Garner died at the hands of the police in Staten Island, his mother, Gwen Carr, has helped turn her son’s cries of “I can’t breathe” into a national movement against discriminatory policing.Ms. Carr has also become a sought-after endorser for political hopefuls looking to represent themselves as candidates of change, especially on policing matters.That is especially true in New York City’s crowded Democratic primary for mayor, where several candidates have been coveting Ms. Carr’s endorsement in the wake of the national protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.But instead of giving her endorsement to one of the more liberal, progressive Democratic candidates, Ms. Carr will announce on Thursday that she will endorse Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive who served on the New York City Police Foundation and who has embraced calls to reform the police, but not defund them.Mr. McGuire, formerly the vice chairman at Citigroup, is a moderate Democrat who was recruited to run by the city’s business community and quickly raised $5 million in three months. But he still must overcome his lack of name recognition among most voters, and expand his appeal beyond the Wall Street elite.Ms. Carr’s endorsement could help Mr. McGuire with some left-leaning voters and shore up support in the Black community, which makes up 26 percent of the electorate.“Eric Garner and George Floyd are examples of what can happen to any Black man in this country and what has happened to all too many Black men in this city,” Mr. McGuire said in an interview. “Gwen Carr’s endorsement means she recognizes that I have what it takes to lead this city and to reflect the voice of those who would not otherwise have a voice.”Ms. Carr said the next mayor can only undertake the necessary police accountability reforms if the city’s future and finances are stabilized.“We know that the budget is in a mess, and from what I read he can balance budgets,” Ms. Carr said. “I have grandsons and granddaughters growing up in this city and I want it to be a safer place for them.”Mr. McGuire, who is Black, has adopted a policing stance that echoes that of Black lawmakers in the city who resisted calls to defund the police last year, citing rising violence in the communities they represent.“Black people want better policing. We want to reform, restructure and reallocate the dollars,” Mr. McGuire said. “We want our policing to be respectful, accountable and proportionate.”Mr. Garner was killed in 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by a police officer, Daniel Pantaleo. A grand jury did not indict Mr. Pantaleo and federal prosecutors decided against pursuing civil rights charges. Mr. Pantaleo remained on the police force for five more years until he was fired and stripped of his pension in 2019 by the police commissioner at the time, James P. O’Neill, after a police administrative judge found him guilty of violating a departmental ban on chokeholds.Ms. Carr said that her pursuit for justice in her son’s death was caught up in politics. She has been critical of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to delay a departmental trial and not fire Mr. Pantaleo. The mayor was elected in 2013 on a promise to overhaul the relationship between the New York Police Department and Black, brown and poor communities.“He has never been a politician,” Ms. Carr said of Mr. McGuire. “We need new blood.”Ms. Carr said she admired Mr. McGuire’s support of the National Action Network, the civil rights organization headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. The group has been one of her biggest supporters since her son’s death. Mr. Sharpton has credited Mr. McGuire as one of many anonymous Black businessmen who had helped fund his organization during difficult times.Mr. McGuire’s campaign will reveal the endorsement on Thursday in a digital ad created by John Del Cecato, who is responsible for the successful 2013 campaign ad that featured Mr. de Blasio’s son, Dante; and Mark Skidmore, chief executive of Assemble the Agency, who wrote the script for Mr. McGuire’s campaign launch video that was narrated by Spike Lee.In the nearly two-minute ad, Mr. McGuire and Ms. Carr visit the location in Staten Island where Mr. Garner had his fatal interaction with the police. Ms. Carr holds onto Mr. McGuire’s arm as they walk toward the location, which is commemorated with a plaque and a mural. He refers to her as “Mother Carr”; she calls him “Mr. McGuire,” but he tells her to call him Ray.Her endorsement will be a disappointment to other candidates such as Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer who was Mr. de Blasio’s legal counsel and former head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.“There are some moderates in the reform criminal justice world for whom this will carry a great deal of legitimacy, particularly those of Ray McGuire’s and Gwen Carr’s generation who are very likely voters,” Professor Kang said. “Trust is an important issue among older voters and that group makes up a high percentage of people who turn out to vote in municipal primaries.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fox News Reports Profit Gain, Despite Ratings Drop

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFox News Reports Profit Gain, Despite Ratings DropThe media powerhouse remains a profit machine, but it faces challenges, including competition from newer outlets and a defamation suit against its parent company.Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of the Fox Corporation, said audience pullback after the election was expected.Credit…Mike Cohen for The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 4:02 p.m. ETIf Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is at all worried about recent ratings declines, the company hid its concern well. Mr. Murdoch’s powerhouse television business continues to see growth in revenue and profit, reporting gains on both areas in its quarterly earnings report announced Tuesday.Fox Corporation, led by Mr. Murdoch’s son Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive, saw a 17 percent jump in pretax profit, to $305 million. It logged an 8 percent gain in sales, to $4 billion, for the three months ending in December, what the company considers its second fiscal quarter.Despite losing the ratings crown to CNN in recent weeks, Fox News is still a profit machine. The cable division saw a 1 percent gain in revenue, to $1.49 billion, and a 3 percent increase in pretax profit, to $571 million. Advertising increased 31 percent, to $441 million, but the fees paid by cable operators to carry the network fell 3 percent, to $928 million, as more people cut the cord.Lachlan Murdoch trumpeted the cable news network’s performance, downplaying the recent drop in viewership.“The Fox News Channel finished the quarter with its highest average ratings,” he said on an earnings call with analysts. “We are now seeing expected audience pullback since the election,” a phenomenon that he said was “consistent with prior election cycles.” He expects audiences to eventually return to the network.The company also announced a multiyear renewal contract for Suzanne Scott, the head of the network, dispelling any concerns that she may be replaced given its recent ratings performance.“Suzanne’s track record of success, innovative sprit and dedication to excellence make her the ideal person to continue to lead and grow Fox News,” Lachlan Murdoch said in a statement on Tuesday.The network did not disclose the exact length or financial terms of the deal.But hanging over the company’s financial future is a defamation lawsuit recently brought against Fox Corporation by a little-known technology provider. The suit, filed by Smartmatic, whose system was used in the presidential election in Los Angeles County, is seeking at least $2.7 billion in damages against Fox Corporation, Fox News and several of its prime-time stars for participating in “the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software,” according to the suit.Mr. Trump and his supporters repeatedly described the election as “rigged,” and Fox News and its sister network Fox Business have given significant airtime to personalities and anchors who have sown doubt about the election results. The suit names the Fox anchors Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro. Mr. Dobbs’s show was abruptly canceled last week, bringing his decade-long run at the company to an end.The financial penalty sought by Smartmatic appears to closely mirror the amount of profit Fox Corporation generates. For calendar year 2020, the company made about $3.1 billion in pretax earnings. Fox recently filed a motion to dismiss the suit.Fox News also faces competition from newer media outlets that tack even further to the right, such as OANN and Newsmax. Fox loyalists seemed to have turned on the network after it called the presidential election for Joseph R. Biden Jr., with some viewers flocking to competitors.When asked about the ratings declines and the impending battle for its core audience, Mr. Murdoch hesitated before answering.“In the journalism trade, you work out what your market is and produce the best product you can possibly produce,” he said. “At Fox News, the success of Fox News throughout its entire history has been to provide the absolute best news and opinion for a market that we believe is firmly center-right.”He seemed unconcerned about the rise in far-right news outlets that have seen record ratings in recent weeks.“We believe where we’re targeted to the center-right is exactly where we should be targeted,” he said. “We believe that’s where, politically, Americans are.”The company’s Fox broadcast stations helped drive much of the quarter’s growth as local networks saw record political advertising during the presidential election season. The broadcast division saw a 10 percent bump in ad dollars, to $1.8 billion.The addition of Tubi, the ad-supported free streaming service Fox acquired last year, also helped increase revenue to the TV unit. Although it is still a money-losing enterprise, Tubi is expected to double its revenue to about $300 million for the fiscal year ending in June, the company said.Michael Grynbaum contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Shaun Donovan's First TV Ad Campaign Features Obama

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsA Look at the Race5 Takeaways From the DebateAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFirst Ad Blitz in N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race Has an Unlikely Star: ObamaShaun Donovan, a former White House budget director, is rolling out his TV ad campaign and hoping his background in Washington will help him emerge from a crowded pack of candidates.Shaun Donovan, center, with then-President Barack Obama in 2014. Mr. Donovan also worked for former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, running New York City’s housing department.Credit…Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 6:53 p.m. ETWith the pandemic transforming New York City’s mayoral race into a mostly virtual affair, the best way to connect directly with voters would seem to be through television ads. Yet so far, the airwaves have been silent.That will change on Tuesday, when Shaun Donovan, the former Obama and Bloomberg administration official, kicks off the first television ad campaign of any significance in the contest.By being first out of the gate, Mr. Donovan is trying to gain attention and seize a narrative advantage, an opportunity that will diminish over time as his better-funded rivals, with presumably bigger advertising budgets, join the television fray. Still, this is the race’s first television advertising purchase, according to AdImpact, an advertising analytics firm.As of Monday afternoon, the campaign had reserved $75,000 worth of cable advertising space for the week of Feb. 9, according to AdImpact. The ads will run on CNN, MSNBC and NY1.The airing of the first ad will cost six figures, according to the campaign, which hopes to spend more than $1 million on television advertising by the June 22 primary. The ad’s timing, more than four months before that primary, is not coincidental.“It doesn’t quite smack of desperation yet, but it’s clearly motivated by the fact that he’s in real danger of being marginalized as a second-tier candidate quickly,” said Neal Kwatra, a Democratic political consultant who is unaffiliated with any of the candidates. “And that matters a lot in a race that is so compressed and is such a sprint.”The race is certainly far different from the campaigns New York City is accustomed to. Meeting voters face-to-face is a risky endeavor; candidates now must jockey for attention in a seemingly endless series of livestreamed forums and fund-raisers. At least three of the race’s more than 30 candidates have already been sidelined by quarantine. One of those three candidates is recovering from the coronavirus.Still, for Mr. Donovan, being first out of the gate on television could carry some risk.By the January filing deadline, Mr. Donovan had yet to raise enough money to quality for the city’s generous matching funds system. Should he spend down his campaign funds too early, he risks running low on cash during the pivotal weeks before the primary, when New York voters will presumably pay the closest attention to the race.Nor is this tactic without historical precedent. Six months before the scheduled 2001 mayoral primary, Alan G. Hevesi, then the city comptroller, launched the race’s first television ads to try to gain early traction. The effort failed: Mr. Hevesi did not win enough votes to qualify for the Democratic runoff between Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer, which took place against the backdrop of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Today, New York City also faces profound crises. Mr. Donovan, a Democrat who served in the Obama administration as budget director and housing secretary, has sought to focus voter attention on his experience in Washington and his ability to wrest meaningful aid from the Biden administration.His first ad campaign hits that theme, beginning with former President Barack Obama extolling Mr. Donovan’s virtues after he nominated him as the White House budget director in 2014.“Shaun’s just one of those people where he sees a problem, and he will work to solve it,” Mr. Obama said then.The 30-second ad then progresses through images of President Biden warmly embracing Mr. Donovan, and Mr. Donovan meeting with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.Throughout his campaign, Mr. Donovan has seemed to distance himself from former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for whom he ran the city’s housing department. The commercial continues in the same vein, with Mr. Bloomberg making a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo.Part of Mr. Bloomberg’s face can be seen in an image of Mr. Donovan on Marine One with Mr. Obama and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo as they respond to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy.Mr. Donovan’s ad, produced by the Win Company, will run on cable television in all five boroughs.Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, heaped praise on Mr. Donovan in a statement, even as she said the former president was unlikely to endorse in the mayoral race.“Secretary Donovan helped lead our country out of the 2008 housing crisis, and later, as the director of O.M.B., he steered top policy priorities like health care access, climate change, inequality and public health, including pandemic preparedness and response,” Ms. Hill said. “President Obama is always heartened when alumni of his administration answer the call to run for office, but he does not typically weigh in on primaries and believes that the voters of N.Y.C. should make this decision for themselves.”Mr. Donovan has yet to break through to the front of the pack in this year’s race. He has about $900,000 in cash on hand, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board. The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, has $6.7 million on hand; the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, has $5.8 million on hand; and the former Citi executive Raymond J. McGuire has $3.8 million at his disposal.“I represent real change,” Mr. Donovan says, speaking to the camera from in front of a row of brownstones in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens, about three miles from his Boerum Hill home. “But the change candidate usually has the least experience. I actually have the most.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Trump Is Pocketing Donors' Cash for the Future

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump’s Sleight of Hand: Shouting Fraud, Pocketing Donors’ Cash for FutureWith breathless, often misleading appeals, the former president promised small donors that he was using the money to fight the election results, but in fact stored much of it for future use.Protesters outside the Supreme Court in December. Many Republican grass-roots donors were drawn in by former President Donald J. Trump’s false promises and “stop the steal” message after the November election.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesShane Goldmacher and Feb. 1, 2021Updated 10:01 p.m. ETFormer President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party leveraged false claims of voter fraud and promises to overturn the election to raise more than a quarter-billion dollars in November and December as hundreds of thousands of trusting supporters listened and opened their wallets.But the Trump campaign spent only a tiny fraction of its haul on lawyers and other legal bills related to those claims. Instead, Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. stored away much of the money — $175 million or so — even as they continued to issue breathless, aggressive and often misleading appeals for cash that promised it would help with recounts, the rooting out of election fraud and even the Republican candidates’ chances in the two Senate runoff races in Georgia.What fraction of the money Mr. Trump did spend after the election was plowed mostly into a public-relations campaign and to keep his perpetual fund-raising machine whirring, with nearly $50 million going toward online advertising, text-message outreach and a small television ad campaign.Only about $10 million spent by Mr. Trump’s campaign went to actual legal costs, according to an analysis of new Federal Election Commission filings from Nov. 4 through the end of the year.Far more is now sitting in the coffers of a new political action committee, Save America, that Mr. Trump formed after the election and that provides him a fat war chest he can use to pay advisers, fund travel and maintain a political operation. Mr. Trump’s new PAC had $31 million in the bank at the end of 2020 and an estimated $40 million more sitting in a shared party account waiting to be transferred into it.Mr. Trump’s extraordinary success raising money came mostly from grass-roots and online contributors drawn to his lie that the election result would soon be somehow wiped away. Only about a dozen donors gave $25,000 or more to one of Mr. Trump’s committees after Nov. 24. (The lone six-figure donation came from Elaine J. Wold, a major Republican donor in Florida.)“Sophisticated donors are not dumb,” said Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor who has supported Mr. Trump in the past. “They could see through what Trump was trying to do.”A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.One of the few five-figure checks deposited in December came from the National Fraternal Order of Police PAC. But its executive director, James Pasco, said the group had actually issued the $25,000 donation in early November. He said he did not know why it hadn’t been cashed until December.“The optics of this are terrible,” Mr. Pasco lamented. “We in no way questioned the election at any point, or were involved in an effort to forestall the results.”Still, many Republican grass-roots donors were drawn in by Mr. Trump’s false promises and “stop the steal” message. He fomented intense opposition to the inauguration of President Biden, which eventually culminated in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol as flag-waving Trump supporters violently sought to disrupt the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory.All told, more than two million donations flowed to the former president and his shared committees with the Republican National Committee from Nov. 24 to the end of the year. Mr. Trump’s fund-raising did stall drastically after the Electoral College certified Mr. Biden as the winner on Dec. 14.In the two weeks leading up to that day, Mr. Trump and the R.N.C. had raised an average of $2.9 million every day online; in the two weeks after, the average was $1.2 million, according to records from WinRed, the Republican digital donation platform.Despite that slowdown, Mr. Trump still outpaced the online fund-raising of the two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who were competing in the Georgia runoff elections that would determine control of the chamber in the last 39 days of the year, which the most recent federal filings cover.Mr. Trump and his shared committees with the R.N.C. raised $80 million online during that period; Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue combined for closer to $75 million. Both Senate candidates lost.“Absolutely that money was misdirected,” Mr. Eberhart said. “I would have loved to see half that money go to the Georgia Senate races.”Mr. Trump’s campaign appears to have contributed nothing to the Georgia races, despite fund-raising appeals that emphasized the importance of the races; the R.N.C. reported $7.9 million in expenditures aiding Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue.A host of corporations and major donors mostly ignored Mr. Trump in the weeks after the election and poured money instead into the Georgia runoffs. Donations included a $5 million check from the American Petroleum Institute and hundreds of thousands more from oil giants like Chevron and Valero, which were fearful of the impact of a Democratic-controlled Senate.Mr. Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Valdosta, Ga., in December. His campaign appears to have contributed nothing to the Georgia Senate runoffs.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesKenneth Griffin, the chief executive of the financial firm Citadel, donated $10 million to the main Senate Republican super PAC in November. Mr. Griffin’s firm now faces scrutiny for some of its investments related to the GameStop stock that soared last month in a Reddit-driven populist revolt.Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity giant Blackstone, who has known Mr. Trump for decades and donated to him in the past, said publicly by mid-November that Mr. Biden had most likely won. Around that time, he gave $15 million to the same Senate Republican super PAC focused on Georgia.“The outcome is very certain today, and the country should move on,” Mr. Schwarzman said in late November.Mr. Trump did incur some legal costs, though there were no disclosed payments to some of the best-known figures in his failed legal fight, including Sidney Powell, the lawyer who spread conspiracy theories and held one news conference in the lobby of the R.N.C., and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s personal lawyer.Mr. Giuliani’s firm was reimbursed for $63,423 in travel in mid-December. (Another firm run by an ally of Mr. Giuliani, the former New York police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, was also paid $20,130 in travel reimbursements; Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Kerik last year for his 2010 conviction on eight felonies.)All told, the Trump campaign paid more than a dozen law firms, including $1.6 million to Kasowitz Benson Torres, more than $500,000 to Jones Day and about $600,000 to Dechert. The law firm of Kurt Hilbert, who was on Mr. Trump’s phone call pressuring the Republican secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” votes to overturn the election outcome, was paid more than $480,000. A $3 million payment went to the Wisconsin Elections Commission to pay for a recount.One major Republican donor, C. Boyden Gray, who contributed more than $2 million to Republicans in the 2020 cycle, also provided legal consulting for Mr. Trump, earning $114,000.The Trump operation continued to spend on fund-raising, pouring millions into a secretive limited liability company, American Made Media Consultants, for online and text-message advertising. Family members of Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence once served on the board of the company, which had more than $700 million in spending flow through it during the 2020 campaign.In the postelection period, more than $63 million in spending flowed through the company from committees linked to Mr. Trump.The Republican National Committee ended the year with more than $80 million in the bank after the fund-raising blitz, and the party is entitled to a share of the $63 million more in two shared accounts with Mr. Trump. Per an agreement, the R.N.C. collected 25 cents for every dollar Mr. Trump raised online through their joint account in December.One of Mr. Trump’s shared committees with the R.N.C. spent nearly $235,000 on books through a company, Reagan Investments, that has also done work for a PAC controlled by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. The Trump campaign offered signed copies of a book by Mr. Cruz last fall to donors who gave $75 or more.And, as they have since the beginning of his candidacy in 2015, Mr. Trump’s campaign accounts patronized his businesses in the postelection period.The Trump Victory committee paid $34,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection in its final 2020 filing. The same committee also paid a Trump-owned limited liability company that operates a private plane, DT Endeavor, $39,200 on Nov. 24.Another Trump campaign committee paid $75,000 in rent to the Trump Tower building in December.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic Senate

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Alvin the Beagle Helped Usher In a Democratic SenateSenator Raphael Warnock was sworn in this week as Georgia’s first Black senator, and he arrived with a canny canine assist.Senator Raphael Warnock and Alvin the beagle during the production of his campaign ad.Credit…Warnock for GeorgiaPublished More

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

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      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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