Trump's former digital advisor will manage his re-election bid

Today, Trump announced he will run for re-election in 2020. But we also learned who will be managing his next campaign: Brad Parscale, the digital advisor for Trump's 2016 run. He lead the then-Presidential candidate's social media strategy, which massively influenced the campaign's fundraising and online presence, as Wired reported days after the election. Parscale won't be idle in the run-up to 2020 -- he'll be helping Republican candidates in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections.

As Wired pointed out, Parscale was with Trump during the 2015 primaries while he was attempting to secure the Republican nomination. The New York businessman had contracted Parscale to oversee the online part of his campaign from the latter's offices in San Antonio. But his social media-focused fundraising and outreach arguably won Trump the Presidency, at least according to Parscale: "Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing. Twitter for Mr. Trump. And Facebook for fundraising," he told Wired shortly after the election.

Social media certainly played a big role in the election, especially once news emerged that Russia backed campaigns on Twitter and Facebook to influence voters. Two weeks ago, FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation formally charged 13 Russian nationals with election tampering, the biggest action yet to come from his efforts to unearth the full effect of foreign influence on the 2016 Presidential election. For their part, both Parscale last July and Trump today denied collusion between the latter's campaign and Russian actors.

Comments to this article were available for the first 24 hours after publication only, and have since been closed.