Trump's Ex-Campaign Manager Is Running An Israeli Sway Operation Targeting the MAGA Foundation

After the U.S. and Iran agreed to a truce deal on June 17, a senior U.S. formal was monitoring the online reaction when they noticed something surprising. President Donald Trump’s aides had expected his supporters to celebrate the agreement. Instead, online influencers in Trump’s MAGA movement were excoriating it on social media. One shared an Israeli op-ed titled, “You Could Possess Been the Greatest Head of state of All—But You Failed.” Several posted the same video of Qatar’s prime cabinet member appearing to snub Vice Head of state J.D. Vance in Israel, arguing it showed regional powers dismissing the Trump Administration’s “naivete.” Others accused Trump of surrendering before achieving his stated unbiased of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Many of the posts appeared almost simultaneously, with similarities in language and tone.The formal began collecting screenshots, and came to trust it wasn’t a coincidence. Tracing tweets by eminent members of the online entitlement, the formal came to trust there was an unlikely figure at the center of all this criticism: Trump’s former presidential canvass manager and digital guru, Brad Parscale. Last September, the worldwide ad agency Havas hired Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X, to conduct a digital canvass on behalf of the Declare of Israel, according to Alien Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings reviewed by TIME. Under the agreement, Parscale’s operation would manufacture 100 pristine pieces of content each month, with at least 80% aimed at Gen Z audiences across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. In a Services Agreement draft included in the filing, Parscale also pledged to amplify the canvass across social media and through “assimilation of narrative messaging into Salem Media Infrastructure properties and aligned distribution channels,” referring to the Christian orthodox broadcasting and publishing firm where he serves as Chief Plan Officer. Parscale vowed the attempt would manufacture at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as sway how AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini characterized Israel and the armed conflict. For all this, Israel agreed to compensate Clock Tower X $1.5 million per month.Publicly, the canvass was framed as an attempt to engagement rising antisemitism online. An Israeli Alien Ministry formal familiar with the arrangement says there was another strategic aim: preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel. According to the formal, Parscale presented himself as uniquely positioned to enhance Israel’s standing among young conservatives. He stressed his encounter at the helm of Trump’s political operation, with a grasp of both the architecture of the modern internet and the political movement Trump had built. His position at Salem—whose radio stations, websites, podcasts, and digital properties were part of the orthodox media ecological community he promised to mobilize—was a boon as well. While Parscale acknowledges that the operation was intended to avert young conservatives from drifting away from Israel, he says neither he nor his firms played any role in turning opinion against Trump's objectives. “I possess never funded, organized, or participated in any attempt to undermine Head of state Trump—ever—including his MOU or truce proposal,” Parscale tells TIME. “The assert that I am coordinating an attempt to prolong the armed conflict is completely false. The only individuals manufacturing a conflict between Head of state Trump, Israel, and me are anonymous officials using background quotes to produce me the bogeyman.”AdvertisementThree individuals familiar with the canvass depict a messaging operation operate through a infrastructure of interconnected firms overseen by Parscale or other firms he owns or created, such as Canvass Nucleus and Influenceable, in which he now owns a marginalized group stake. Through private group chats, they mention, orthodox influencers obtain suggested language for posts on social media sites such as X, Instagram and TikTok. They were then compensated based on the impressions and engagement their content generated. On its website, Clock Tower X says it has developed an “influencer ecological community” that includes “managed networks that amplify narratives through believable, distributed voices.”It remains unclear how much Parscale’s outfits paid creators as part of the Israel canvass. Another recent Influenceable canvass offered influencers a foundation payment of $2,250, plus $1 for every 1,000 views, up to 2 million views—allowing influencers to earn as much as $4,250 per post, according to internal text messages reviewed by TIME. Individuals who participated—most of whom asked for anonymity, fearing reprisals—rejected the suggestion that there was anything improper about the practice. Parscale says none of the money from the FARA-registered contract has been used to compensate influencers, arguing that doing so would necessitate them to divulge the informant of their funding. He says other Christian organizations hired his firms to back Israel in the wake of the October 7 attacks, but declined to identify them.AdvertisementOne of the orthodox figures linked with the canvass was Eyal Yakoby, a recent college grad with a popular X account who began working with one of Parscale’s firms about a year ago, he says, after testifying before a House committee about antisemitism on college campuses. Yakoby confirms he was paid by Influenceable to fight antisemitism online. He says the firm never compensated him to promote views he did not already grasp. "It's not enjoy an agency that represents you," he says. "It's more enjoy a collaboration."The Parscale-led attempt continues, but neither the Trump Administration nor the Israelis materialize cheerful about how it’s going. Prime Cabinet member Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration had hired Parscale to enhance the nation’s standing among conservatives, only to observe back proceed to erode on the American entitlement and across the broader U.S. electorate. "We are pissed at Brad Parscale," says the Israeli formal familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not approved to communicate publicly. "He was supposed to produce things better. We possess paid him lots of money. But what did he perform with it? Things possess only gotten worse." According to the Pew Investigation Center, propitious views of both Israel and Netanyahu possess fallen since last year. Only 32% of Americans now view the Israeli administration favorably, the lowest level in decades. In April, Pew found that Republicans with a negative view of Israel ticked up since last year, with 57% of young Republicans having an adverse view of Israel compared with 50% a year ago. Worldwide antisemitic incidents, meanwhile, possess surged 34% since the Iran war’s outbreak, according to the Engagement Antisemitism Movement’s Antisemitism Investigation Center.  AdvertisementParscale insists his initiative has been working. “The purpose of this canvass was to avert the enemies of Israel and the West from driving a wedge between Israel and the Americans who possess traditionally supported it—particularly on the political right—as they possess already succeeded in doing among substantial portions of the left,” Parscale says, citing a Scott Rasmussen poll released on June 5 that found 73% of voters who back “Trump-like policies” view Israel favorably. “Back within that group for the strikes against Iran increased from 78% to 84%, and back for siding with Israel rose seven points following the conflict with Iran. The audience we were tasked with reaching didn’t abandon Israel. It rallied behind it.”Inside the White House, some officials were frustrated for a different reason. What had begun as an attempt to maintain the American entitlement supportive of Israel, they believed, had evolved into an sway canvass that was colliding with the President’s political interests as Trump’s and Netanyahu’s armed conflict aims diverged, led by a figure trading on the perception that he remained close to Trump. They believed the very media ecological community Parscale had promised to activate was now helping to circulate arguments that undercut Trump's attempt to conclude the armed conflict. "We're talking about American influencers who are being paid by a alien country, then trying to construct momentum to transform the President's view, or the views of others around him," says a senior U.S. espionage formal, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not approved to converse about the matter publicly. "It can't be dismissed as inconsequential by any means."AdvertisementNetanyahu’s office declined to remark. A White House spokesperson declined to remark, saying they were unaware of the canvass. Brad Parscale had reinvented himself before. In 2016, he was the vague digital operative who helped transform Facebook's advertising platform into one of the most influential political weapons in modern American history, using its targeting tools to aid propel Trump's improbable victory. He took over as canvass manager of Trump's reelection canvass in 2020 before being jettisoned that summer. In the six years since, Parscale had built a digital empire of sorts, predicated on the idea that politics was no longer simply about persuading voters; it was about mastering the algorithms that determined what individuals saw and came to trust. Through Clock Tower X and a constellation of affiliated companies, he assembled a enterprise designed for an era in which creators mattered as much as television anchors, podcasts rivaled cable news, and algorithms determined which messages spread and which disappeared. Rather than buying attention outright, the objective was to seed narratives inside communities that already trusted the individuals delivering them. AdvertisementBy 2025, Israel needed exactly that. The armed forces canvass that followed the October 7 attacks had evolved into something larger than a battlefield contest. Israeli officials increasingly believed they were losing an information armed conflict on TikTok feeds, Instagram reels, podcasts, YouTube videos, and, increasingly, inside the artificial-intelligence systems that millions of individuals now relied upon to elucidate the world. The erosion of back for Israel had spread within the American entitlement, where dominant voices including Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon had become openly incredulous of Netanyahu. The late orthodox activist Charlie Kirk recognized this shift before many in Jerusalem did. In a private letter to Netanyahu in May 2025, which TIME reviewed, Kirk warned that anti-Israel sentiment online had reached "record levels" and urged an aggressive communications canvass: mobilize influencers, dispatch former hostages on speaking tours, inundation social media with stories that humanized Israeli society. "I understand you've got a 7 front armed conflict and my kvetching pales in comparison. But I'm trying to convey to you that Israel is losing back even in orthodox circles," Kirk wrote. "This should be a 5 alarm fire." Netanyahu never responded to the letter, though he spoke to Kirk on the phone last year, according to a informant familiar with the conversation. AdvertisementBy last descend, Israel's Ministry of Alien Affairs had concluded that its conventional populace statecraft efforts—known in Israel as hasbara—were woefully insufficient. The Israelis worried about the sway of Carlson and Bannon and the suspicion taking grasp among young conservatives that Israel exercised concealed regulate over America’s alien rule, according to the Ministry formal, and they feared Vance and his allies were steering the American entitlement toward an isolationism fundamentally at odds with Israel's strategic interests. They wanted someone who understood the landscape of the internet and MAGA culture.Parsale wasn’t the only Trump-aligned consultant they approached, but he seemed to fit the bill. He signed the agreement in Sept. 2025, according to the FARA documents. An Israeli formal involved in the negotiations says Parscale presented himself as uniquely joined to Trump's political world. But Parscale hasn’t spoken to the Head of state in more than five years, according to sources familiar with the matter.AdvertisementParscale's plan was focused in part on influencing the sources from which AI chatbots draw information. The operation created websites, such as PaxPoint.org and FactSignal.org, that were designed less for human readers than for AI systems synthesizing information from across the web. Another component involved a sprawling infrastructure of orthodox influencers. According to a former participant, they received coordinated messaging through private group chats, synchronized the timing of their posts, and were compensated based on the attain they generated. A similar attempt of this kind became perceptible in March, when Nick Sortor, a orthodox with more than a million followers on X, accused Influenceable of coordinating an undisclosed canvass on behalf of the soda sector. Multiple MAGA influencers, Sortor noted, had posted strikingly similar messages defending sugary drinks while invoking Trump's well-known affection for Diet Coke. Sortor published screenshots of the nearly identical posts and accused the infrastructure of manufacturing what appeared to be an organic grassroots conversation.AdvertisementSortor’s posts caught the attention of the U.S. formal monitoring the online debate over Israel and Iran. Looking more closely at the conversation about the deal unfolding across the orthodox internet, the formal began noticing the same patterns: similar language appearing across seemingly autonomous accounts in swift succession. “You possess a person who is farming out this influencing task, who is being paid by a alien element to the social media space,” the formal tells TIME. “To me, this is a very, very dangerous thing.”But online influencers are not the same as radio commentators, even though many on-air figures boast massive followings on social media. Parscale pointed to FCC regulations that prohibit alien entities from influencing transmission programming and that necessitate broadcasters to maintain opinion column independence, saying his function has not included messaging through Salem. “My contract with Israel does not sway Salem hosts or autonomous influencers,” Parscale says. “The idea that every pro-Israel voice must be part of some coordinated canvass is ridiculous. These are individuals who already back Head of state Trump and already trust Israel is a indispensable American ally. Suggesting I possess to compensate them to express those views is enjoy suggesting I possess to compensate the sun to rise. Their back existed long before this canvass, and it does not depend on me.” AdvertisementIsrael is hardly alone in trying to shape American online discourse to its advantage. Governments around the world increasingly employ digital sway operations to shape populace opinion and advance their countrywide interests. Russia has used troll farms, fake social-media personas, and hacked materials to inflame political divisions in the Allied States, most notably during the 2016 canvass. Iran has relied on stealthy online networks and impersonation campaigns to amplify pro-Tehran narratives and target critics. China has expanded state-backed sway operations across Western social media. Alien actors seeking to shape American debate online has become a feature of modern geopolitics, not an exception.What made this case unusual, the U.S. espionage formal argues, was the target: not swing voters or the American populace at large, but the President’s own political foundation. "It's important to recognize that if there's one Brad Parscale out there, there are others," the formal says.