Earlier quoted context omitted.
He didn't claim it wasn't affiliated with Trump, he said they didn't rely on it that much. And the appeal to 'whataboutism' is a complete non-sequitur, as there is no whataboutism in the parent comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism Claiming that Obama's campaigns were the true microtargeters, and that if we are angry at the actions of generic people, we must then be angry at Obama, because he did these very things. That is the Whataboutism, or tu quoque fallacy. In lieu of anything to back that claim up, I'll just stick with Hutchins Razor, and reply "Nuh Uh."
Well, it must not be that bad if it doesn't bother you when "your side" does it.
What if... and try to stick with me here, because this is a pretty radical thought here in 2018... what if both sides are doing a despicable thing, and rather than argue with each other about "whataboutism" we should resist both of them?
(In this particular case, I don't think that the campaigns did the exact same things... I think they've been doing all they can possibly get away with for a very long time. So it gets worse every campaign not necessarily because anybody is worse than ever before, but because especially in this century, every four years "all they can possibly get away with" has been growing like gangbusters.)