Trump campaign guru Parscale came to Fort Lauderdale for politics, fun. Then came the meltdown

At 6 feet, 8 inches tall, campaign strategist Brad Parscale literally stood atop the political world after his boss, Donald Trump, trounced the Republican field in the 2016 Florida primary and overcame Hillary Clinton in the critical Sunshine State to claim the presidential election.

Though the digital guru hailed from Texas, he started scouting locations to live in Florida, a key swing state, just a year after Trump’s victory. Parscale zeroed in on Fort Lauderdale, said one person who has known him for years, because it was conveniently located between Miami and Trump’s palatial property at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

Plus, while it was more buttoned down than South Beach, the city offered similar sun, sand and fun — and, the person said, Parscale, 44, had a reputation for being “a wild guy, a risk taker.”

“Fort Lauderdale is known for being a place to have a good time, while still being respectable and geographically central,” said the person. “He chose Fort Lauderdale probably because it suited his lifestyle.”

In just two years, records show, he bought three separate waterfront properties in the city, collectively worth more than $4 million. Still — until his video-recorded takedown by police this past week after an apparent emotional crisis — Parscale appeared to keep a relatively low-profile in the upscale Seven Isles neighborhood. It’s a community of waterfront homes and mansions, many boasting expensive boats and yachts in the backyard, just a bike ride from the restaurants and shops of Las Olas Boulevard, the heart of the Fort Lauderdale social scene.

A few neighbors, who declined to be named, said they were shocked by the meltdown, calling him a “great guy.” When he hung around his $2.4 million house, he seemed to fit right in. After his demotion as campaign manager in July, news photographers caught him at his home looking laid back — shirtless, in shorts, big Panama hat, beer in one hand, cellphone in the other. It was pretty much the same outfit he wore last week when police responded to his wife’s calls that he was threatening to kill himself and perhaps others.

Coincidentally, another high-profile Trump confidant, Roger Stone — whose conviction on charges of lying to Congress and other charges related to Russian meddling in the 2016 election was overturned by the president this summer — said in a text message that he lives a few blocks from Parscale. But “we have never had any interaction.”

Parscale’s life suddenly imploded last Sunday morning. Fort Lauderdale police, responding to a call that he was carrying a gun and threatening to kill himself, tackled and cuffed him outside the waterfront home he shares with his wife, Candice. Shirtless and carrying a beer, Parscale was involuntarily placed in a local hospital for 72 hours under the state’s Baker Act.

A police petition — approved Wednesday by a judge to temporarily confiscate a small arsenal of firearms from his multimillion-dollar home — portrayed Parscale as emotionally unstable, a heavy drinker who in recent weeks has been physically abusing his wife, brandishing guns and threatening to shoot himself or others.

Parscale “poses a significant danger of causing personal injury to himself or others by having a firearm or any ammunition in his custody or control,” a Fort Lauderdale police detective wrote in the petition filed to seize his weapons. Police have not filed criminal charges, primarily because his wife, Candice, who accused Parscale of hitting her, took back her original statement.

The couple released a statement to Politico late Wednesday saying that Parscale, who remained working for the Trump campaign as a senior data strategist, was leaving the campaign entirely because of the “overwhelming stress on his family.” His wife also told Politico that police had misconstrued her statement and that her husband “was not violent toward me that day or any day prior.”

“I am stepping away from my company and any role in the campaign for the immediate future to focus on my family and get help dealing with the overwhelming stress,” Parscale told the Internet news site.

On Thursday, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh avoided talking about Parscale’s problems with the police. “We simply hope for the best for Brad and his family.,” he said. “We’ll leave it at that.”

Parscale could not be reached for comment for this story. Several Broward County Republican politicians and party leaders also did not return calls and messages for comment.

State corporate and property records show Parscale began his move to Fort Lauderdale in 2017 after Trump’s presidential victory, which greatly enhanced the strategist’s profile for reaching crucial voting blocs in battleground states like Florida through data and other means on social media.

He registered his Texas digital company in Florida in the fall of 2017. The following year, he paid $895,000 for a condo on the Intracoastal Waterway and then just over $1 million for another condo overlooking the ocean. And in January 2019, Parscale closed on his current residence at 2319 Desota Drive in the Seven Isles community, taking out a loan of nearly $2.3 million for the 3,500-square-foot, four-bedroom home with pool. The loan covered almost the entire sales price, $2.4 million. Parscale still owns all three properties with his wife and other family members.

Before Sunday’s blow-up and his demotion as Trump’s campaign manager in July, Parscale had taken center stage in presidential politics.

He was profiled in a long piece in the New York Times Magazine titled: “Can the Trump Campaign Rewrite the Story of the Trump Presidency? Brad Parscale sees a path to victory through discounted Facebook ads and keeping Trump on TV.”

The article portrays Parscale as a “Kansas-bred college-basketball player turned San Antonio-based web designer who improbably ascended to his job as, in Trump’s words, ‘the world’s tallest campaign manager.’ ‘’ It describes Parscale and Trump “like a match conceived in Hollywood.”

Throughout the piece, Parscale oozed confidence. “I don’t tend to be a person who panics about the future,” he told the New York Times. “Right now, if it’s Trump versus Biden, we destroy them. It’s like we’re rolling in tanks and they’re playing with pellet guns.”

He made that boast just a few months before he would be fired as Trump’s campaign manager amid declining poll numbers. He also wrongfully claimed hundreds of thousands of people had applied for tickets to the president’s return to the campaign trail at a June rally in Tulsa. Because of the pandemic, the rally attracted a sparse crowd.

Soon after his firing in July, a legal complaint was filed with the Federal Election Commission alleging the Trump campaign and an affiliated fundraising committee did not properly report nearly $170 million in spending through two firms set up and run by Parscale.

“The firms serve as conduits that receive millions in payments from the campaign and disburse the funds to the campaign’s ultimate vendors, thereby concealing the campaign’s transactions with those vendors,” the complaint reads.

Murtaugh, the Trump campaign spokesman, rejected the claims, saying the campaign reports all vendor payments as required by the FEC.