Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale described what he considers President Donald Trump’s biggest campaign mistake during a Tuesday night interview on Fox News’ “The Story.”
Parscale, who was removed as Trump’s campaign manager in July and hospitalized in September after barricading himself in his home, told anchor Martha MacCallum that failing to express “public empathy” throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic likely cost him key suburban voters.
“I think that goes to one thing,” Parscale said as he and MacCallum discussed Trump’s costly decline in support among suburban moms. “I think it was a decision on COVID to go for opening the economy versus public empathy and I think a young family with a young child who were scared to take them back to school, wanted to see an empathetic president and an empathetic Republican Party. And I think that … he chose a different path.”
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Parscale emphasized his continued support and love for Trump throughout the interview, but contended that the two “had a difference on this.”
“I thought we should have had public empathy,” he continued. “I think people were scared. I walked around people and watched people walk around me … because I got a mask on and they don’t want to get COVID. I can see waitresses standing a little farther from the table. People are scared. And I think if he would have been publicly empathetic, he would have won by a landslide then. I think he could have leaned into it instead of run away from it.”
“So it sounds like you think that was the biggest error, empathy over COVID,” MacCallum observed.
Parscale responded by calling it a “policy error” before saying Trump will still “go down as one of the greatest presidents.” (RELATED: Geraldo Rivera Calls For ‘A Real Gut Check,’ Says Trump Is ‘On The Wrong Course’ To Help Georgia Republicans)
“I think he got one choice away from being perfect and that was do I want to open the country and be the economic … or do I want to be publicly empathetic?” Parscale concluded.