WASHINGTON, November 23. /TASS/. The son-in-law of US President-elect Donald Trump, the 35-year-old Jared Kushner, had a huge if not a decisive role in the Republican candidate’s victory in the US presidential elections, the Forbes magazine says.
"Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election," Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, said in an interview published in the article titled "How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House." "Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources."
Despite his itchy Twitter finger, Trump is a Luddite, the magazine writes. "He reportedly gets his news from print and television, and his version of e-mail is to handwrite a note that his assistant will scan and attach. Among those in his close circle, Kushner was the natural pick to create a modern campaign."
"I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley, some of the best digital marketers in the world, and asked how you scale this stuff," Kushner says. "They gave me their subcontractors."
The husband of Ivanka Trump learned how to use Facebook micro-targeting, the magazine writes. "The Trump campaign went from selling $8,000 worth of hats and other items a day to $80,000, generating revenue, expanding the number of human billboards-and proving a concept. In another test, Kushner spent $160,000 to promote a series of low-tech policy videos of Trump talking straight into the camera that collectively generated more than 74 million views."
By June, Kushner took over all data-driven efforts. Brad Parscale from Texas became his right-hand man who created the campaign’s data hub. "We weren’t afraid to make changes. We weren’t afraid to fail. We tried to do things very cheaply, very quickly. And if it wasn’t working, we would kill it quickly," Kushner says. "It meant making quick decisions, fixing things that were broken and scaling things that worked."
The data operation soon dictated every campaign decision: travel, fundraising, advertising, rally locations-even the topics of the speeches, the magazine writes. "Kushner’s system, with its high margins and up-to-the-minute voter data, provided both ample cash and the insight on where to spend it. When the campaign registered the fact that momentum in Michigan and Pennsylvania was turning Trump’s way, Kushner unleashed tailored TV ads, last-minute rallies and thousands of volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls."
News Corp. billionaire Rupert Murdoch assumed that for the next years Kushner will be "a strong voice, maybe even the strongest after the vice president.".