Trump Says Voter Data Is Dumb, Builds Voter Data Operation

Was his rejection of tech infrastructure just a long con?

 Maybe Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t all that unique after all. Politico reports that after publicly spurning a data operation to target voters and raise cash –a move that more or less rejects modern campaign infrastructure– the presumptive Republican is building, yes, a data operation to target voters and raise cash. Quite the head fake.

According to Politico: “Trump’s willingness to turn for data assistance to companies that worked against him —despite earlier signals that his campaign intended to blacklist them— is perhaps the surest sign yet that the rookie candidate is moving to professionalize a campaign that had mostly ignored modern political tools like data.” He’s even hiring firms that worked for his former rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, as well as the #NeverTrump movement.

The article cites unnamed GOP strategists who say Trump “may have been intentionally head-faking his critics,” by downplaying the importance of campaign data, and that his campaign has a “a substantive infrastructure that’s not been seen or found out about or reported about quite purposefully.” This includes tying his operation into that managed by the RNC, which has put major resources into datasince 2012.

The RNC infrastructure part checks out. Well done, Mr. Trump. But while head-faking looks cool when you’re playing basketball during recess, it’s ridiculous in a campaign. Who is this supposed grade school head game even for? It’s the equivalent of a fourth-grader offering potato chips to a classmate during lunch period, then yelling “psych” and taking them back. But that kid had his own chips in his backpack, anyhow. He doesn’t care about the psych.

Any suggestion Trump’s original take on data was just a savvy act of political deception is ridiculous. If that were the case, it would have to be part of an incredibly long con, one which included an orchestrated organizational meltdown that saw the campaign’s previous data director, Matt Braynard, leave Trump’s roadshow back in April without even training a successor. Trump doesn’t seem capable of pulling off such an elaborate and pointless ruse.

Trump is, however, capable of cronyism. Politico mentions the recent hiring of Brad Parscale as the campaign’s digital director. Parscale’s web-design firm is not known for digital campaigns so much as building Trump’s websites, and being “close to the family.” Parscale’s firm never “received a single disclosed payment from a federal political committee before the Trump campaign.”

This news follows weeks in which many pointed out “Donald Trump does not have a campaign” or, in a similar vein, “there is no Donald Trump campaign.” Moreover, Trump’s lack of organization and his ignorant, bizarre, solipsistic responses to both the Orlando massacre and Brexit have even led to suggestions of self harm. Such an atrocious performance has made speculation about him quitting the campaign seem reasonable.

With all this in mind, leaked news of Trump’s growing data operation might be little more than damage control. This falls in line with other efforts being made by his campaign to appear more like an actualcampaign, including the firing of former campaign manager and journalist-grabber Corey Lewandowski, and the hiring of an actual communications director. Nevertheless, Trump, as America’s political staph infection, has proven resistant to previous signs he would run a traditional general election campaign. Whatever results he achieves from this newly enhanced data operation and campaign infrastructure will be informed by the trash puddle that preceded it.