A senior US official linked Brad Parscale, US President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, to a social media campaign denouncing the US-Iran ceasefire, Time Magazine reported on Tuesday.
The official found that after the ceasefire was agreed on June 17, the president'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's report noted.
The report also noted that many of the posts appeared almost simultaneously and with similar language and tone.
The official reportedly began collecting screenshots, believing this was not coincidental, and eventually claimed to have traced them back to Parscale.
In September, a global advertising agency, Havas, hired Parscale'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's group would produce "100 original pieces of content each month, with at least 80% aimed at Gen Z audiences across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts," Time reported.
As part of the agreement in the filing, Parscale pledged to "amplify the campaign across social media and through 'integration of narrative messaging into Salem Media Network properties and aligned distribution channels,' referring to the Christian conservative broadcasting and publishing company where he serves as chief strategy officer," Time wrote.
Parscale allegedly vowed that the campaign would produce "at least 50 million digital impressions per month, as well as influence how AI tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini characterized Israel and the war," the report noted.
Israel paid Parscale's company $1.5m., TIME reported
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 "effort to combat rising antisemitism online," Time reported.
The magazine cited a Foreign Ministry official allegedly familiar with the arrangement saying that the Jewish state had another strategic aim of "preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel."
Parscale reportedly presented himself as "uniquely positioned to improve Israel's reputation among young conservatives," Time cited the unnamed official as saying.
In order to do this, he highlighted his experience spearheading Trump's political operation, as well as a grasp of "both the architecture of the modern internet and the political movement Trump had built," the report said.
This was boosted by his position at the aforementioned broadcast network.
Parscale acknowledged that the operation was intended to "prevent young conservatives from drifting away from Israel, he says neither he nor his firms played any role in turning opinion against Trump's objectives," TIME wrote.
"I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump - ever - including his Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) or ceasefire proposal," Parscale told Time.
"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," he added.
However, three people familiar with the campaign described a messaging operation run through a "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," Time reported.
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.
The report highlighted that Clock Tower X's website says it has developed an "influencer ecosystem" that includes "managed networks that amplify narratives through credible, distributed voices."
It "remains unclear how much Parscale's outfits paid creators as part of the Israel campaign," Time added.
Parscale denies money came from FARA-registered contract
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.
Additionally, other Christian organizations hired his firms to support Israel following the October 7 massacre, but he declined Time's request to identify them.
Furthermore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government hired Parscale to improve the nation's standing among conservatives, but saw its support erode, Time reported.
"We are p***ed at Brad Parscale," an Israeli official familiar with the agreement, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Time.
"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," the official said.
The campaign was designed to "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," Time cited Parscale as saying.
He was citing a poll released on June 5 which found that 73% of voters who support "Trump-like policies" have favorable views towards Israel.
"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't abandon Israel; it rallied behind it," he said.
White House officials, however, were frustrated for a different reason, Time said.
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's political interests as his and Netanyahu's war aims diverged.
The officials believed that the media ecosystem Parscale had promised to create was now helping to spread arguments that undercut Trump's efforts to end the war with Iran, the report said.
"We're talking about American influencers who are being paid by a foreign country, then trying to build momentum to change the president's view, or the views of others around him," a senior US intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity told Time.
Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office and a White House spokesperson declined to comment, with the latter saying they were "unaware of the campaign."
The report also cited surveys by the Pew Research Center which found that favorable views of both Israel and Netanyahu had fallen since 2025.
According to Pew, 32% of Americans view the Israeli government favorably, which is the lowest level in decades, Time reported.
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.
Additionally, antisemitic incidents worldwide surged by 34% since the start of operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, the Combat Antisemitism Movement's Antisemitism Research Center's data showed, according to Time.