{"id":541550,"date":"2026-07-14T20:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T20:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/541550\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T20:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T20:21:15","slug":"fmr-donald-trump-aide-linked-to-israeli-campaign-seeking-conservative-backing-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/541550\/","title":{"rendered":"Fmr. Donald Trump aide linked to Israeli campaign seeking conservative backing on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A senior US official linked Brad Parscale, US President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/iran-news\/article-902499\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Trump<\/a>&#8216;s former campaign manager, to a social media campaign denouncing the US-<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/iran-news\/article-902418\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Iran<\/a> ceasefire, Time Magazine reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The official found that after the ceasefire was agreed on June 17, the president&#8217;s aides had expected his supporters to celebrate the agreement, but online influencers linked with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement were denouncing it on social media, Time&#8217;s report noted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The report also noted that many of the posts appeared almost simultaneously and with similar language and tone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The official reportedly began collecting screenshots, believing this was not coincidental, and eventually claimed to have traced them back to Parscale.<\/p>\n<p>In September, a global advertising agency, Havas, hired Parscale&#8217;s Clock Tower X to conduct a digital campaign for Israel, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings that TIME reviewed. Under the deal between the two organizations, Parscale&#8217;s group would produce &#8220;100 original pieces of content each month, with at least 80% aimed at Gen Z audiences across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts,&#8221; Time reported.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"A person holds a sign supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump during a gathering of Iranian community members showing support for Israel and the United States, outside the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, on March 5, 2026.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"632\" height=\"492\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/images.jpost.com\/image\/upload\/f_auto,fl_lossy\/729876\"\/>A person holds a sign supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump during a gathering of Iranian community members showing support for Israel and the United States, outside the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, on March 5, 2026. (credit: PATRICK T. FALLON\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p>As part of the agreement in the filing, Parscale pledged to &#8220;amplify the campaign across social media and through &#8216;integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels,&#8217; referring to the Christian conservative broadcasting and publishing company where he serves as chief strategy officer,&#8221; Time wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Parscale allegedly vowed that the campaign would produce &#8220;at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as influence how AI tools such as OpenAI&#8217;s ChatGPT, Anthropic&#8217;s Claude, and Google&#8217;s Gemini characterized Israel and the war,&#8221; the report noted.<\/p>\n<p>Israel paid Parscale&#8217;s company $1.5m., TIME reported<\/p>\n<p>As part of this, Israel allegedly agreed to pay Clock Tower X $1.5m. per month, while the campaign would be publicly framed as an &#8220;effort to combat rising antisemitism online,&#8221; Time reported.<\/p>\n<p>The magazine cited a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-899817\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Foreign Ministry<\/a> official allegedly familiar with the arrangement saying that the Jewish state had another strategic aim of &#8220;preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Parscale reportedly presented himself as &#8220;uniquely positioned to improve Israel&#8217;s reputation among young conservatives,&#8221; Time cited the unnamed official as saying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In order to do this, he highlighted his experience spearheading Trump&#8217;s political operation, as well as a grasp of &#8220;both the architecture of the modern internet and the political movement Trump had built,&#8221; the report said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">This was boosted by his position at the aforementioned broadcast network.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Parscale acknowledged that the operation was intended to &#8220;prevent young conservatives from drifting away from Israel, he says neither he nor his firms played any role in turning opinion against Trump&#8217;s objectives,&#8221; TIME wrote.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump &#8211; ever &#8211; including his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/iran-news\/article-902327\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Memorandum of Understanding<\/a> (MoU) or ceasefire proposal,&#8221; Parscale told Time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;The claim that I am coordinating an effort to prolong the war is completely false. The only people manufacturing a conflict between President Trump, Israel, and me are anonymous officials using background quotes to make me the bogeyman,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>However, three people familiar with the campaign described a messaging operation run through a &#8220;network of interconnected firms overseen by Parscale or other firms he owns or created, such as Campaign Nucleus and Influenceable, in which he now owns a minority stake,&#8221; Time reported.<\/p>\n<p>Conservative influencers used private group chats to discuss suggested language for social media posts, and were compensated based on impressions and engagement their content generated, the three people told Time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The report highlighted that Clock Tower X&#8217;s website says it has developed an &#8220;influencer ecosystem&#8221; that includes &#8220;managed networks that amplify narratives through credible, distributed voices.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It &#8220;remains unclear how much Parscale&#8217;s outfits paid creators as part of the Israel campaign,&#8221; Time added.<\/p>\n<p>Parscale denies money came from FARA-registered contract<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The report cited Parscale as saying that none of the money from the FARA-registered contract was used to pay influencers, since doing so would require disclosure of the source of their funding.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, other Christian organizations hired his firms to support Israel following the October 7 massacre, but he declined Time&#8217;s request to identify them.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s government hired Parscale to improve the nation&#8217;s standing among conservatives, but saw its support erode, Time reported.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are p***ed at Brad Parscale,&#8221; an Israeli official familiar with the agreement, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;He was supposed to make things better. We have paid him lots of money. But what did he do with it? Things have only gotten worse,&#8221; the official said.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign was designed to &#8220;prevent the enemies of Israel and the West from driving a wedge between Israel and the Americans who have traditionally supported it, particularly on the political Right, as they have already succeeded in doing among significant portions of the Left,&#8221; Time cited Parscale as saying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">He was citing a poll released on June 5 which found that 73% of voters who support &#8220;Trump-like policies&#8221; have favorable views towards Israel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;Support within that group for the strikes against Iran increased from 78% to 84%, and support for siding with Israel rose seven points following the conflict with Iran. The audience we were tasked with reaching didn&#8217;t abandon Israel; it rallied behind it,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>White House officials, however, were frustrated for a different reason, Time said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The campaign was believed to have begun to keep the American Right supportive of Israel but turned into an influence campaign that collided with Trump&#8217;s political interests as his and Netanyahu&#8217;s war aims diverged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The officials believed that the media ecosystem Parscale had promised to create was now helping to spread arguments that undercut Trump&#8217;s efforts to end the war with Iran, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re talking about American influencers who are being paid by a foreign country, then trying to build momentum to change the president&#8217;s view, or the views of others around him,&#8221; a senior US intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity told Time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s office and a White House spokesperson declined to comment, with the latter saying they were &#8220;unaware of the campaign.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The report also cited surveys by the Pew Research Center which found that favorable views of both Israel and Netanyahu had fallen since 2025.<\/p>\n<p>According to Pew, 32% of Americans view the Israeli government favorably, which is the lowest level in decades, Time reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Further, in April, Pew found that more Republicans hold a negative view of Israel, with 57% of young Republicans having an unfavorable view, as compared to 50% the previous year, the report cited.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, antisemitic incidents worldwide surged by 34% since the start of operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, the Combat Antisemitism Movement&#8217;s Antisemitism Research Center&#8217;s data showed, according to Time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior US official linked Brad Parscale, US President Donald Trump&#8216;s former campaign manager, to a social media&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[56,246541,4197,42,10180,87,46,4178,1486,43,75,3064,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-541550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-ceasefire","tag-conservative-political-action-conference","tag-gen-z","tag-headlines","tag-influencer","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-memorandum-of-understanding","tag-news","tag-right-wing","tag-spotlight","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}