Trump lost to Biden because he lacked 'empathy' for coronavirus victims, says his former campaign manager
REUTERS/Tom Brenner
- Trump's failure to show "empathy" for people affected by the coronavirus pandemic cost him the election, his former campaign manager has said.
- Brad Parscale told Fox News that the American public wanted their president to show empathy towards them.
- "He chose a different path," Parscale said.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Donald Trump lost the election because he failed to demonstrate "empathy" towards the public during the coronavirus pandemic, his former campaign manager Brad Parscale has said.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Parscale said that voters in suburban areas abandoned Trump because he prioritised re-opening the US economy instead of demonstrating empathy as he downplayed the severity of the virus.
"I thought we should have public empathy. I think people were scared," Parscale told Fox News on Tuesday.
Parscale told Fox that families in suburban areas in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia had wanted to see the president demonstrate that he understood the effect of the pandemic on them.
"I think a young family with a young child who were scared to take them back to school wanted to see an empathetic president and an empathetic Republican party. I think that — and I've said this multiple times — he chose a different path."
President-elect Joe Biden defeated Trump in the election by 306 electoral college votes to Trump's 232. President Trump consistently sought to downplay the severity of the coronavirus even as it spread rapidly across America, claiming multiple of lives, claiming in July it would soon "disappear."
More than 270,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, according to John Hopkins University, the highest death rate of any country in the world.
After being hospitalized with the coronavirus in October, Trump told Americans not to let the virus "dominate" their lives and continued to hold rallies across the country.
One study linked the president's rallies to as many as 700 coronavirus deaths, and polling before the election from Pew Research Center, among other pollsters, found that a majority of the public disapproved of Trump's handling of the pandemic.
Biden, meanwhile, remained at home for the first 71 days of the pandemic, per the Washington Post, and consistently advocated public health measures including the wearing of a mask.
Parscale, who is reportedly writing a book about his time as Trump's campaign adviser, was demoted in July.
Outlets including Insider subsequently reported that President Trump was furious at the level of campaign spending Parscale had overseen and billed him "the $10 million man" because of the level of personal wealth he believed Parscale had accumulated from working for Trump.
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