FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Brad Parscale was the digital guru behind Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 election and was promoted to manage the 2020 campaign. But he didn’t last long in that job: his personal life was revealed in public and he later sent a message to a friend saying he felt “guilty” for helping Trump win after the riot at the US Capitol.
Since then, he has become an evangelist about the power of artificial intelligence to transform the way Republicans run political campaigns. And his company is working on Trump’s 2024 candidacy, trying to help the presumptive Republican nominee take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden.
Here’s what you should know about Parscale and its new role:
Parscale says his company, Campaign Nucleus, can use AI to help generate personalized emails, analyze oceans of data to gauge voter sentiment, and find persuadable voters. It can also amplify social media posts from “anti-woke” influencers, according to an Associated Press analysis of Parscale’s public statements, his company documents, slideshows, marketing materials and other records not previously made public.
Soon, Parscale says, his company will deploy an app that will leverage AI to assist campaigns in collecting absentee ballots, in the same way that DoorDash or Grubhub drivers pick up dinners from restaurants and deliver them to customers.
Parscale was a relatively unknown web designer in San Antonio, Texas, when he was hired to build a web presence for Trump’s family company.
That led to a job on the future president’s campaign in 2016. He was an early hire and led an unorthodox digital strategy, teaming up with scandal-plagued Cambridge Analytica to help propel Trump to the White House.
“I pretty much used Facebook to elect Trump in 2016,” Parscale said in a 2022 podcast interview.
After Trump’s surprise victory, Parscale’s influence grew. He was promoted to manage Trump’s re-election bid and enjoyed celebrity status. An imposing 6-foot-2 figure with a Viking-style beard, Parscale was often seen at campaign rallies taking selfies with Trump supporters and signing autographs.
Parscale was replaced as campaign manager shortly after a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drew an unexpectedly small crowd, infuriating Trump.
Since last year, Campaign Nucleus and other companies linked to Parscale have received more than $2.2 million from the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their related political action and fundraising committees, financial records show campaign.
Parscale did not respond to AP questions about what he is doing for the Trump campaign. Trump called artificial intelligence “so scary” and “dangerous,” while his campaign, which avoided highlighting Parscale’s role, said in an emailed statement that it did not “involve or use” tools provided by any AI company. .
Companies linked to Parscale were paid to host websites, send emails, provide fundraising software and digital consulting, campaign finance records show.
The Biden campaign and Democrats are also using AI. So far, they have said they are deploying the technology primarily to help them find and motivate voters and to better identify and overcome misleading content.
Last year, Parscale purchased property in Midland, Texas, in the heart of the nation’s highest-producing oil and gas fields. It’s also the hometown of Tim Dunn, a born-again evangelical billionaire who is among the state’s most influential political donors.
In April of last year, Dunn invested $5 million in a company called AiAdvertising, which once bought one of Parscale’s companies under a previous corporate name. The San Antonio-based advertising company also announced that Parscale would join as a strategic consultant, receiving $120,000 in stock and a $10,000 monthly salary.
“Boom!” Parscale tweeted. “(AiAdvertising) finally automated all the technologies used in the 2016 elections that changed the world.”
AiAdvertising has added two prominent national figures to its board: Texas investor Thomas Hicks Jr. – former RNC co-chair and longtime hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. In January, Dunn gave AiAdvertising an additional $2.5 million through an investment firm, and AiAdvertising said in a press release that the cash infusion would help it “generate more engaging, higher-impact campaigns.”
Dunn declined to comment and AiAdvertising did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Parscale occasionally offers glimpses of the AI future he envisions. Presenting himself as an outsider to the Republican establishment, he said he sees AI as a way to undermine elite Washington consultants, who he described as political parasites.
In January, Parscale told a crowd gathered at a grassroots Christian event at a Pasadena, Calif., church that his movement needed “to have our own AI, from creative models of broad language and creative imagery, we need to achieve our own audience with our own distribution, our own email systems, our own texting systems, our own ability to place TV ads, and lastly, we need to have our own influencers.”
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Burke reported from San Francisco. AP National Political Writer Steve Peoples in Washington and Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” exploring the influence of artificial intelligence on the 2024 election cycle.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
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