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The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment and the Trump campaign declined to comment.
Faced with an increasingly uphill battle for reelection and aides trying to steer him in new, sometimes conflicting directions, Trump has grown increasingly unnerved in the last week about his reelection prospects. Lashing out at Parscale was just the most recent manifestation of that anxiety.
“He’s p*ssed because he knows he messed up in those briefings,” one Republican close to the White House said of Trump lashing out.
Last Wednesday, two days before Trump lashed out at Parscale, his campaign manager and several other top political advisers briefed him on internal campaign and Republican National Committee data showing the President was heading for defeat in key battleground states. Parscale, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other advisers urged him to scale back his daily, combative news conferences and pointed to data showing that the briefings were hurting him with critical swing voters in those states.
Trump has complained to aides that his restricted travel has hurt his numbers, not the briefings.
One person familiar with the call said the message didn’t appear to sink in with the President, who instead changed the subject away from the issue of briefings.
But the next day, Trump’s outlandish comments about disinfectant only amplified those advisers’ urgings. Even as he erupted at Parscale on Friday evening, during that day’s briefing the President took no questions. And the next day he scrapped the briefing altogether.
Despite the outburst, two sources said Trump and Parscale patched things up later that Friday night.
But Parscale, who has been working from his south Florida home for the past month, flew back to Washington on Wednesday to get some face time with his boss.
Two sources familiar with the matter said Parscale spent several hours at the White House on Wednesday where he discussed reelection strategy with Trump and secured his approval for new campaign ads that will knock former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, for his stance on China.
