Trump campaign staffers: The top aides guiding president’s reelection
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President Trump's run for reelection is backed by a massive campaign organization that’s been building toward the 2020 election since he entered the White House in January of 2017.
"It’s a completely different operation from running an insurgent campaign that we took over the Republican Party to now having a campaign that everybody is united on the Republican side,” Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told Fox News earlier this year.
Here's a look at some of the leading players in the president’s campaign team.
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Brad Parscale – Campaign manager
Brad Parscale made history as the first digital director to manage a major party presidential campaign. The digital consultant began working for Trump Organization in 2011, designing and developing websites and creating and managing online media strategies. Parscale – a former student basketball star who’s 6’ 8’’ tall – designed the website for Donald Trump’s presidential exploratory committee in early 2015 and joined Trump as digital director of the campaign when the business and media mogul declared his candidacy for the White House.
After Trump’s victory, Parscale in January 2017 helped launch America First Policies, an outside nonprofit organization that promotes the president’s agenda and initiatives. In early 2018, he was named campaign manager of Trump’s 2020 reelection team. One of Parscale’s firms, Red State Data and Digital, is one of the vendors for the leading pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.
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Parscale was instrumental in the 2016 Trump campaign’s extremely successful and innovative efforts to woo voters through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Last month, under his leadership, the 2020 team unveiled a campaign app that uses gamification to increase voter outreach and the collection of crucial voter data — in an effort to increase its digital advantage over presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Michael Glassner – Chief operating officer
Michael Glassner is a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns. He served as Bob Dole’s traveling aide during then Kansas senator’s first White House bid in 1988, and a senior adviser on Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. He was also an adviser on then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and worked on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 White House campaign as a top adviser to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was the Arizona senator’s running mate. A couple of years later, Glassner joined SarahPAC – Palin’s political action committee – as chief of staff and the group hired his firm, C&M Transcontinental, for consulting.
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Glassner was hired in July 2015 as political director on Trump’s presidential campaign. Less than a year later, in March 2016, he was named deputy campaign manager. And even before Trump took over in the White House in January 2017, the then-president elect announced he would keep his campaign structure together and named Glassner as chief operations officer and top strategist for the 2020 reelection bid.
Lara Trump – Senior adviser
The president’s daughter-in-law is a senior adviser on the campaign and a frequent surrogate for the president’s reelection team. The former TV producer for "Inside Edition" is married to the president’s son Eric, with whom she has two children.
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Katrina Pierson – Senior adviser
Katrina Pierson, a onetime Tea Party activist and leader, unsuccessfully primary challenged longtime GOP Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas in 2014. She was hired in November 2015 as the national spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign and quickly became one of the presidential candidate’s staunchest defenders on the cable news networks.
Pierson worked at the pro-Trump group America First Policies after during the first year and a half of the Trump presidency. She joined the Trump re-election campaign in March of 2018 as a senior adviser.
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Tim Murtaugh – Communications director
A former local TV reporter and anchor, Tim Murtaugh is also a veteran, having worked for then-Virginia Gov. George Allen’s 2000 Senate campaign, then-Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore’s 2005 gubernatorial campaign, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Governors Association and the Republican Party of Virginia. He was serving as communications director for Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania before joining the Trump administration as director of communications for the Department of Agriculture.
Murtaugh was hired in February of 2019 as communications director for the Trump reelection campaign, and also serves as a surrogate for the reelection team on TV and on the campaign’s digital programming.