On Tuesday, speaking to Fox News, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale pinned blame for the president's election loss on his inability to be "publicly empathetic" to those suffering from the coronavirus pandemic.
"I think [our suburban losses go] to one thing," said Parscale, who was demoted midway through the campaign after bad press for his lavish spending and Trump's frustration over his failure to improve his slide in polls. "I think it was the decision on COVID to go for reopening the economy versus public empathy. And 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, and he chose a different path, and I don't think he's wrong for this, I love him, but we had a different song on this — I thought we should have public empathy," he continued. "I think people were scared. I watched people walk around me ... because I've got a mask on and they just don't want to catch COVID. I could see how waitresses stood a little farther from the table. People were scared. And I think if he would have been publicly empathetic, he would have won, by a landslide. I think he could have leaned into it instead of run away from it."
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