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Trump’s 2020 Campaign Announcement Had a Very Trumpian Rollout
By KATIE ROGERS and MAGGIE HABERMANFEB. 27, 2018

WASHINGTON — With just 980 days to go until the next presidential election, President Trump said Tuesday that he would run again in 2020, an announcement that several White House advisers said simply meant the president would step up his preferred and much-missed activity of performing for an adoring crowd.

In effect, it continues the permanent campaign of a president who, from the time he took office over a year ago, has signaled his interest to run again and has kept holding campaign-style rallies. The president officially filed for re-election with the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 20, 2017, the day of his inauguration.

It was also a statement aimed at ending speculation among allies and critics that Mr. Trump, who has faced a series of personal scandals, and whose campaign remains the subject of an F.B.I. investigation into possible ties to Russia, might not run for re-election at all.

But another part of Mr. Trump’s announcement — that Brad Parscale, his 2016 campaign digital director, would be elevated to campaign manager — signaled a more complicated political maneuver on behalf of the president’s family, and specifically Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, according to the president’s advisers.

Mr. Kushner was close to Mr. Parscale during the 2016 campaign, and putting him in an expanded role was widely seen as a power play by the president’s son-in-law. It was first breathlessly reported by the Drudge Report — and billed as both a “historical record” and a “bold move.” Matt Drudge, the website’s proprietor, is in frequent contact with Mr. Kushner.

Mr. Parscale, 42, is a frequent presence in Washington. The rare scruffily bearded man in Mr. Trump’s clean-shaven orbit, Mr. Parscale often spends one or two nights a week holding court with vendors and people he describes as “fans” in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel.

Mr. Parscale did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but in an interview with The New York Times in June, he described himself as a “blue-collar kid from Kansas who understood what Trump was saying,” and spoke at length about his devotion to the Trump family.

“I was always the family guy on the campaign,” Mr. Parscale said. “If I saw or heard anything that I didn’t think was good for the family, my loyalty was to the family first.”

In another interview, in August, Mr. Parscale described his role on the 2016 campaign.

“I build the plumbing,” he said. “I changed the plumbing of campaigns, from moving it from TV to digital.”

Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 and now a counselor to the president, described Mr. Parscale as an “unbroken thread” from that campaign. “It should surprise no one that family members and a major player who has not come inside the administration would be called upon to redouble that effort for the re-elect,” Ms. Conway said.....................https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/politics/trump-2020-brad-parscale.html