A former campaign manager for President Donald Trump is sparking outrage in the White House after accepting millions of dollars in exchange for peddling an online influence campaign, one that U.S. officials believe is directly undercutting the president, Time reported Monday night.
“We’re talking about American influencers who are being paid by a foreign country, then trying to build momentum to change the President’s view, or the views of others around him,” a senior U.S. intelligence official told Time, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It can’t be dismissed as inconsequential by any means.”
The former Trump campaign manager is Brad Parscale, who helped Trump manage both his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaign. Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X, was awarded last December a $6 million contract – later amended to be increased to $9 million – by the Israeli government to push an online pro-Israel information campaign.
The contract was secured, in part, based on “the perception that [Parscale] remained close to Trump,” Time reported. But as Trump pushed to end the war with Iran, the operation Parscale built “evolved into an influence campaign that was colliding with the President’s political interests,” Time reported, as influencers in his network turned critical of the ceasefire effort.
Parscale flatly denied the accusations to Time.
“I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump,” he told the outlet, dismissing the allegation as false and accusing anonymous officials of turning him into a scapegoat. A White House spokesperson declined to comment, saying they were unaware of the campaign.
In addition to Trump administration officials, Parscale also managed to enrage Israeli officials.
“We are p—ed at Brad Parscale,” an Israeli official told Time, also speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He was supposed to make things better. We have paid him lots of money. But what did he do with it? Things have only gotten worse.”
The $9 million paid to Parscale’s firm represents only a small portion of the $730 million Israel plans on spending to help improve its global image amid its ongoing siege on Gaza, which a United Nations commission and countless human rights organizations have described as a genocide.
Parscale has also been accused of facilitating foreign intervention into an Arizona Democratic primary election by Noah Kai Newkirk, a Democratic congressional candidate who filed an official complaint with his state’s attorney general. Newkirk accused Parscale of spearheading a “campaign of [artificial intelligence] political persuasion texts hitting voters in our district.”
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