Brad Parscale, Digital Director, Donald J. Trump Presidential Campaign, on the PandaConf Stage during day three of Web Summit 2017 at Altice Arena in Lisbon. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Web Summit via Sportsfile Image by Wikimedia Commons

President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, had a friendly Twitter exchange on Tuesday with a social media network popular with white supremacists, urging it to create an iPhone app he could use.

“I’m not against @getongab. Just get me an iPhone app,” Brad Parscale said about the website Gab. “I am all for a @Twitter replacement. This platform is so left I need to balance myself right with an elephant. Pun intended.”

Gab, which does not remove hate speech or offensive content from its service, has become somewhat of an “alt-right” Twitter. It currently does not have an iPhone app because Apple has claimed it contains “defamatory or mean-spirited content.” Gab CEO Andrew Torba has claimed that Apple has rejected Gab “eight of nine times.”

Parscale is no stranger to social media services: he ran Trump’s digital operations during the 2016 campaign, using Facebook and other social media to bolster Trump’s messaging with the help of Cambridge Analytica, which had surreptitiously acquired Facebook users’ personal data.

Gab has not always been friendly to those in the political sphere: it banned white nationalist congressional candidate Paul Nehlen from the site in April after he revealed the secret identity of a prominent troll.

Juliana Kaplan is a news intern at The Forward. Email her at kaplan@forward.com or follow her on Twitter, @julianamkaplan

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount