Donald Trump campaign director says Trump-supporting Facebook employees are the reason he won
The Donald Trump campaign’s digital director Brad Parscale appeared on the CBS show 60 Minutes on Sunday night. It’s unclear why Parscale was willing to do the interview, or what 60 Minutes was hoping to get out of him, but he ended up voluntarily making some rather shocking claims. Chief among them: the Trump campaign was allowed to pick Trump-supporting Facebook employees to work with them, and Trump only won because of the help Facebook provided.
Parscale told 60 Minutes that Facebook embedded its employees in the Trump campaign in order to help with the campaign’s Facebook advertising efforts. He also claims that because he “wanted people who supported Donald Trump,” he was allowed to screen Facebook employees based on whom they supported in the election. Facebook has posted a response on its website where it states that “The campaigns did not get to “hand pick” the people who worked with them from Facebook” (link) but it has not refuted the claim that it knowingly gave its Trump-supporting employees to the Trump campaign.
This suggests that Facebook was so eager to continue receiving the Donald Trump campaign’s ad buys, that it was willing to send its own employees to help out in an overtly partisan capacity. It’s still entirely unclear precisely what these Facebook employees did while at the Trump campaign, whether they violated Facebook terms of service in order to help the Trump campaign, and whether they were in effect acting as surrogate Trump campaign employees. Parscale’s other admission may be even more stunning.
After laying out precisely how Facebook sent Trump-supporting employees to essentially help run the Trump campaign, Brad Parscale then specifically stated that it’s “how Trump won.” He’s saying Trump wouldn’t have won if Facebook hadn’t bent over so far backward to help out the campaign. However, Parscale’s claims could be an attempt at getting the public to blame Facebook for the election outcome, as a way of distracting from the Trump campaign’s criminal collusion with the Russian government.
