Trump "not on the ballot" in 2018, but his agenda is, campaign manager Parscale says
President Trump's 2020 re-election campaign manager, unveiling a new television ad for the midterm contests, says next week's elections are about his agenda, not Mr. Trump himself. "The president's not on the ballot," Brad Parscale said in a "CBS This Morning" interview Monday. "This is about his agenda."
The new $6 million broadcast and digital ad buy was launched Monday to urge voters to back Republicans in next week's midterm elections -- without mentioning the president's name. That's appropriate, Parscale says in the interview, since "right now this midterms is all about holding the House and continuing the lead in the Senate."
"It's about...what he's accomplished in two years," Parscale said. The ad, he continued, says that we "can't go back," that "it's important to get out and vote. The things that have changed in the last two years, they could go away and we need to vote Republican."
The minute-long spot focuses on the country's low unemployment rate and improvements in the economy, with the narrator warning that "this could all go away if we don't remember where we came from and choose the right future."
"It's about everything," Parscale says in the interview. "Things are getting better and there are still things we have to get done. If we don't hold the House, we don't increase our lead in the Senate, those changes can't keep coming and dealing with immigration laws and the things and problems we still have. And to make this country even safer and better, we have to have the Republicans empowered." Otherwise, he added, "the fight turns into obstruction."
The ad comes as Mr. Trump is ramping up his campaign schedule in the final stretch of the midterm elections, with stops planned in Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, Montana, Georgia, Tennessee, and Ohio. He's largely going to states he won, where Democratic Senate incumbents are trying to fend off challenges from Republicans.
The president's campaign, Parscale told "CBS This Morning," is targeting two different groups in the week leading up to the midterm elections. "The president's base, which I call the army of Trump -- he's going to fight for them to show up. They are paying attention." But "there's also a huge batch of independent voters, suburban mothers, there's people out there that might not be watching the news every day," he added. "And I think this commercial is really targeted towards them."