Brad Parscale, the manager of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, told Laura Ingraham this week that the president was gearing up for a 2020 campaign that would eclipse his own stunning political victory in 2016.
Sounding supremely confident about Trump’s ability to secure a second term in office, Parscale predicted that Trump was going to position himself in such a way that his strengths as both a campaigner and as a president were evident to anyone paying attention to the election.
“Either way,” Parscale said, “he’s going to stay strong. He’s fighting for this country. He did this for no other reason but to save the country, and I don’t think he’s going to move away from that. It’s how we won the last election and it’s going to be how he continues to win.”
Parscale said that Trump’s streamlined 2016 campaign, which primarily relied on small donors and the candidate’s own personal funds, would be expanded into “one of the largest political campaign operations in history.”
“I think he’s put so much emphasis in what we’re building in 2020,” he said. “I go in weekly and give these reports.”
On the suggestion that Trump may not be looking to run a second time, Parscale scoffed. “He’d be wasting a considerable amount of time, which he does not like to do.”
Parscale also dismissed the suggestion that President Trump would be cutting down on the huge, rally-style approach this time around.
“He needs to get on the road also and talk about all of his achievements — all the promises have been kept — and get out there and do those things,” he insisted. “But rallies aren’t going away. We already have a couple on the line for this month. We’re going to continue to be out there. The president is going to get out there and engage with people.”
Near the end of the interview, Ingraham asked Parscale if there was any Democrat in the emerging field that Trump thought was more likely than any other to be the nominee.
“Today I said I had to go to the office to find a bigger binder because I’m trying to track all these candidates,” he said. “It’s going to get so thick. I mean, I’m flipping through the pages. I think right now, I don’t see any clear person that’s stepping up to the president.”
The smart money is probable still on Biden, though we could see a path for Bernie to win the nomination as well. Then again, who knows? Maybe Kamala Harris or Beto O’Rourke will pull a rabbit out of the hat. Hell, for all we know, the nominee may be someone who hasn’t even expressed interest yet. Someone like, say, Hillary Clinton.
No matter who it is, we have a feeling that Parscale and Trump are justified in their confidence.
