Former campaign manager Brad Parscale said President Trump needed to show empathy during the coronavirus crisis and fears his failure to do so may have cost him a second term.
“When you’re president, you tell a story. Americans want storytelling,” Parscale said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “Tell the story of what they are. Tell them that you’ll be there for them in the bad times.”
Trump, with an eye toward November, continued to tout his administration’s historic successes on employment and the economy even as efforts to slow the spread of the virus closed down businesses, cost jobs, and sparked a recession.
Had the president shown greater empathy, “he would have been the hero,” said Parscale, who said he doesn’t mean this to be a knock against Trump.
“I actually really like him as a person. Really like him,” Parscale emphasized, “but the problem is the people around him, the D-level people, and I’m not gonna name names, they actually played into his stuff, so they could keep power next to him, for their own benefit.”
Parscale said the public needed to see compassion from the commander in chief. Trump had to rally people and say, “We’re all in this together.” He added he felt that people needed to be personally assured by Trump that he was marshaling the full force of the United States government to help them.
Empathy was widely considered a strength of his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the president-elect. Trump is still contesting the election results in several states and has refused to concede the race.
“If he just would have been publicly empathetic as I told him to be,” Parscale told the Washington Examiner. He was removed as campaign manager and replaced by Bill Stepien in July.
Sources close to Trump said they had urged him throughout his presidency to stop making everything about him, not to treat everything as a personal battle, and not to treat every accomplishment as a personal victory.
“We have created jobs in America — you didn’t make a single damn job. We made jobs,” a source close to Trump said.
Instead of getting sidetracked by petty wars, such as going after businessman and former professional athlete LaVar Ball or Sen. John McCain, Trump could have focused on a collective message to uplift people.
Later, as Trump planned to restart his campaign rallies over the summer, Parscale said he urged the president to call Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close Trump ally, about hosting an outdoors rally in the state.
“I begged the president to call DeSantis and talk about letting us back in there — that’s where originally I wanted it, and he said, ‘I won’t do it,’” Parscale said.
Trump instead held his first post-lockdown rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, indoors, amid consternation from public health experts.
Looking ahead, Parscale thinks Trump’s visit to Georgia Saturday to stump for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue ahead of the state’s Jan. 5 runoffs will be important.
“I think Trump should do the right thing for his legacy and win those two races and almost say, ‘See? I’m still a power to reckon with,’” he said. “That’s what I would do.”
Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, a Republican, challenged Loeffler for her seat in the first round of voting, campaigning largely on his forceful defense of Trump during the impeachment fight and Senate trial. “Just because one guy goes up and testifies and plays tough doesn’t mean he deserves to take out a sitting senator,” Parscale said.
Though Parscale has said that he expects the Trump family to continue as a political dynasty after Trump leaves office, he explained that this “doesn’t mean they’re all going to run for office.”
“They’re going to have power: fundraising, messaging, policy,” he said. “You know, the most powerful Republicans have never been in office.”
He added: “They’re a good family. I love being with them and having dinner with them and doing things with them. They always treated me like a million dollars until the very end.”
