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CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Earlier this month, on the sidelines of the quadrennial campaign managers’ conference at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, I spent nearly an hour speaking to two of the architects of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
Co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and chief pollster Tony Fabrizio have much in common. Bald and bearded, the two Italian-Americans are veterans of many a Republican campaign. Fabrizo worked on Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential bid, and LaCivita emerged on the national scene in 2004, when he orchestrated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on John Kerry.
In fact, when the conference discussion here turned to why Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t deploy Taylor Swift, LaCivita interjected to crack: “I was the original Swiftie.”
Fabrizio is older and less sharp-elbowed than LaCivita. He can be the cooling saucer to his younger colleague’s hot cup. At one point during the IOP conference, Fabrizio jokingly said “down, boy,” to an animated LaCivita.
Yet by his standards, LaCivita, every bit the pugnacious Marine and Purple Heart recipient, was fairly restrained at Harvard. When Harris strategist David Plouffe didn’t show up at the conference, LaCivita decided to scrap his planned troll: to arrive with and display on the table a copy of Plouffe’s book, “A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump.”
Fabrizio and LaCivita have worked on a number of Republican races together and aren’t shy about finishing the other’s sentence. But all their time in the campaign trenches couldn’t prepare the two paisans for the most extraordinary year in modern American politics. Along with co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, they oversaw a campaign that prevailed through indictments, convictions, a pair of assassination attempts and over two Democratic standard-bearers.
Until this interview, neither had spoken at length on the record about Trump’s victory. You’ll want to read the entirety of our free-flowing conversation. Fabrizio discusses the Biden alternative who tested the strongest against Trump, LaCivita reveals one of his few regrets, and both weigh in on who they think will emerge as the 2028 GOP nominee.
This conversation, best read with a strong red, has been edited for length and clarity.
Was this election a macro election and it’s just that simple — high inflation, disorder at the border, unpopular incumbent, therefore the out party wins?
Fabrizio: No, because we faced — Well, first of all, I look at this election, I used to refer to it as the black swan election. If you look at all the events that took place and said, now we’re going to have an election and just one of them is going to occur — you’d say, "Wow, that’s incredible." You have two assassination attempts. The incumbent candidate leaving in the middle of the race. You had his replacement being chosen without getting a single vote. You had all of these different things happening — candidate getting indicted. Candidate getting convicted. Those were all challenges that we faced. Nothing was inevitable to us. We knew that the environment was primed for us to be victorious. But it was us — think about a farm, right. You got all of this fertile land but if you don’t farm it right, you’re not going to get a crop.
Does that piss you off — the fact that the structural environment gets the credit for Trump winning more than the actions of the campaign?
Fabrizio: Well, that’s only what happens when the Democrats lose.
When did you guys think winning the popular vote was a real possibility?
LaCivita: Last two weeks.
Why?
Fabrizio: So the president asked me election day, he said: "What about the popular vote?" I said: "Well, sir, popular vote is tough." It really depends on what happens in states like New York and California. Because it all depends on what their margins are, how much we lose them by. But you know the truth of the matter is: Winning the popular vote from our perspective, I don’t want to call it a vanity point, but …
But it’s an important vanity point, because it says ’16 was not a fluke. This is somebody who has got a real movement behind him.
Fabrizio: Well, we knew because of the shifts in the other demographic groups — that we were going to get that. The question was whether or not it could all play together.
LaCivita: Whether it would be enough.
Fabrizio: You know, what was going to happen with Black men.
When you had that conversation, Tony, with Trump — was it clear that he wanted the popular vote, that it was important to him?
Fabrizio: I have to say he was very content with what I had told him.
LaCivita: But he started asking the question about the popular vote — that’s when I think he knew that he was in good shape. Because it was about seven days out, is when he started asking Susie and I point blank: "Do you think I can win the popular vote?" It no longer became a discussion of how are we doing in the battlegrounds. I remember telling Susie, I said: "I think he thinks we’re going to win."
Fabrizio: When I saw him on Election Day, all he wanted to know is: "You still saying feeling good?" I said: “Yes sir.”
Feeling good about the popular vote or electoral vote?
Both: The outcome.
How deep in the weeds is he about the data? Is he asking you about La Crosse, Wisconsin, or the numbers in suburban Philly?
Fabrizio: (Shakes head no and quotes Trump) "You feeling good about it?" That’s what he wants to know.
One of the jokes was, when I would say "I’m feeling good about it," he would go, "You sure?" And I would go, when did we switch that I became the optimist, and you became the pessimist? Because usually I’m the pessimist in these circumstances.
You guys mentioned the last two weeks. And I think this is an important point that hasn’t really been touched on. But I think it gets to the heart of politics in this moment and Trump specifically, which is, he said a bunch of things in the final weeks of the campaign that were provocative, let’s put it that way.
Fabrizio: As he’s known to do.
Exactly. Which I think gave a level of confidence to the Harris folks and Democrats broadly that Trump is closing in a way that really could help us. And he’s, to put it bluntly, pissing this thing away. Do his comments just not matter because it’s just so baked in?
Fabrizio: Two things. One is, is that the people who were off to the side, were people that were tuned out to mainstream news sources.
They weren’t hearing the Arnold Palmer comment.
Fabrizio: They weren’t hearing it. They weren’t hearing it. And to the extent that they did hear it, they had already made up their mind on him saying stuff like that. Again, if this race was about policy and performance, we win. And that’s why we kept it on policy and performance.
LaCivita: And I think the press has overplayed its hand on how it deals with what he says and does. There’s nothing ever positive said. Everything is negative, negative, negative, negative. And I think the general population — people in general, just turned it off. They’re like: Eh.
They care about themselves, not him.
LaCivita: Right.
There’s the great old Bill Clinton line, which is, “Voters care more about their future than my past.”
LaCivita: It is.
Fabrizio: Like we said, show me a voter who didn’t have an opinion on Donald Trump, one way or another, and I’ll tell you: They’re lying.
Right. But their opinion was chiefly to how they were doing. Now versus four years ago.
Fabrizio: What he can do for them. One of the things — the difference that we saw, from ‘20 to now, is there was a group of voters that had just accepted, he is what he is, but I know that he can do A, B, C and D, and you know why I know that? Because he did it. It wasn’t a promise. He had done it.
Was there a moment between July 21, when Joe Biden drops out, not where you thought you were going to lose, but where you said: “Well, this thing is a real ballgame.”
Fabrizio: I would say, the first couple of weeks after he dropped out, Harris just took off like a rocket.
LaCivita: Our numbers never changed.
Fabrizio: She just took off like a rocket. Her image changed 20 points. But what happened is, I used to describe it like a wave coming up on the shore, and the wave hit its high-water mark and then it just receded back. And so, the one thing she was never able to do, was close the sale.
Why?
Fabrizio: Because they just didn’t really have a coherent message. And they changed. I mean, one of the untold stories of this race — perfect example, last week of the campaign. They ran 162 different unique creatives on digital, TV.
How many did you have?
Fabrizio: 50. And by the way, we spent about the same amount of money.
LaCivita: But if you were looking at it from TV, just broadcast, we had two [commercials]. That’s it. That’s it!
What did your data show was your most effective ad against her?
Fabrizio: There were several. Well, first, usually any ad where she was talking, was effective. Using her words. And there were a ton. In fact, there was so much, we couldn’t use all of it.
Was the trans stuff more effective than her not having an answer on The View on differences with Biden?
Fabrizio: Two different things.
LaCivita: Appealed to two different groups of voters, too.
Talk about that for a minute, Chris.
LaCivita: We’re focusing on the group of persuadable voters and a group of low propensity voters. It’s two different tacks. Low propensity: Get them to vote. Persuadable: Try to get them over. The Harris campaign was convinced [persuadables were] around 4 to 6 percent. We knew it was probably closer to 10 to 12 percent. We focused the entire campaign built around the issues that matter to the persuadable voters early. Tony modeled them, and we tracked what the electorate, based on the persuadables, was thinking. And that drove all of our decision making. All of our decision making. We spent millions in mail in the summer, which we were roundly criticized for doing. All of this stuff was something that we started in June.
Would she have been better off running a conventional campaign against Trump as a pro-rich guy, tax cuts for the rich Republican who’s going to end your entitlements. Instead of saying: fascist, John Kelly.
LaCivita: What they did do, they started off with — Let’s not forget, Biden spent $100 million, a couple hundred million attacking us, and it had negligible impact.
And then she shows up, she raises $1.5 billion in 107 days, gets crowned queen, coronated, gets tens of millions of dollars in free media where she’s the best thing since sliced bread. And yet, our numbers never changed. She consolidated the Democratic base. The bedwetters on the right try to decapitate the campaign at a critical, critical time.
Who was behind that?
LaCivita: Corey [Lewandowski] and Kellyanne [Conway], if you ask me.
[Told of the claim, Lewandowski said of Harris: “I was prepared for her. Many others were not.” Conway denied the charge but suggested there were attempts to overthrow the campaign staff. “Nope. Wasn’t I. Despite the many entreaties to join I rebuffed and expressed confidence in the team. Routinely. Including to President Trump. I kept the peace. Others, not so much.”]
Tony, was there ever a moment where you thought, look, this is Trump’s third campaign, he’s gone through some campaign folks in the past, maybe this is going to be the time where our number is up.
Both: No.
Fabrizio: Having been through three of these with him, I like to say: "In ’16 we got lucky, in ’20 we got screwed, in ’24 we earned it."
Fair enough, but Trump can be, when it comes to personnel, he can make some changes. There was never a moment where either of you guys thought …
Fabrizio: He bitches about me, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
There was never a moment where, "oh, the boss could be" ...
LaCivita: Nope.
Is that because of the primary? Because he so dominated the primary that that put capital in your bank?
Fabrizio: (turns to LaCivita) It definitely put capital in their bank for sure.
You and Susie.
LaCivita: Yeah.
Were you guys preparing for her to do more to run to the center — to say, look, I’m not a liberal?
Fabrizio: That’s why we came at her for being a liberal right out of the gate.
Do you think that she hurt herself by not doing more to reassure the center?
Fabrizio: I think at some point, they became hamstrung by their own base. And they became hamstrung by their loyalty to Biden.
Did that surprise you by the way, that she couldn’t break from Biden?
LaCivita: It’s a really tough position to be in.
Fabrizio: She’s the sitting vice president.
Did your data show that she would be rewarded, politically, from breaking from Biden?
Fabrizio: The problem was it would have undercut Democratic enthusiasm and motivation.
Did your polls show that?
LaCivita: Yeah. When you talk about if she had gone to the center — they had no intention of ever going to the center because they're incapable of doing that. If she was going to run the center, she would have picked [Pennsylvania Gov. Josh] Shapiro to be her running mate.
I’m tempted to ask you if he still would have picked JD had Kamala already been the nominee — if Biden had dropped out by the time you picked your VP, would it have been a different choice?
Fabrizio: Honestly, I don’t know. That’s an imponderable, I will tell you that by picking JD — JD was a very deliberate pick.
How so?
Fabrizio: Well, I think, one, they have a really good personal relationship. Two, I think he sees JD — and I’m not trying to put words in the president’s mouth — he kind of sees JD as the torch-carrier of MAGA. This was a generational pick. This is, "I want this movement to go forward beyond me."
You expect JD to be the nominee in ‘28?
Fabrizio: Yes — well, he certainly has a leg up.
Do you, Chris?
LaCivita: I do.
Let’s talk about Biden for a minute. Tell us about the polling data before and after that first debate.
LaCivita: We were in a great position pre-debate.
What does that mean?
Fabrizio: At that point, if the election were held before the debate, we likely would have won Virginia, and we would have won Minnesota and maybe New Hampshire.
So what did the polling look like two weeks after the Biden debate?
Fabrizio: The electoral vote count didn’t change all that much. What happened was you had states like New York and New Jersey and Illinois where Biden’s lead contracted so it boosted the national numbers up, so the national numbers became inflated. You saw polls where some of them had us up six nationally.
What happens if Biden stays in?
Fabrizio: We would have definitely won the popular vote, and we would have won with a larger electoral college vote.
LaCivita: And we would’ve won more Senate seats.
Were there other Democrats you tested as possible opponents?
Fabrizio: Yeah, we tested them all.
Who was the strongest?
Fabrizio: Strangely enough, Michelle Obama.
But that was never an option for Democrats.
Fabrizio: But we tested it! Everybody said: "Oh, you got caught flat-flooted," we were not flat-footed.
LaCivita: Bullshit, we were way ahead of the ballgame.
Fabrizio: We tested them all!
When?
Fabrizio: Right after the debate, soon as the whispers started.
LaCivita: But back in May, we did an analysis of what it would take to remove Biden as the nominee because we wanted to know how the Democratic Party would do it. And then of course, then it gets put on the back burner. And then the first debate happens, me, Tony and Susie were watching the debate, within the first 5 minutes we were like:
"Oh fuck, he’s not going to last."
Where were you?
LaCivita: Right behind the stage, in the green room. Five minutes into the debate, I look at Tony and Susie, and were like, I said: “He’s dead.” He’s not going to stay.
What did Trump say after the debate? Did he get, in the moment, how bad that was for Biden?
Fabrizio: Oh, he knew. Immediately. I think he was like, “I can’t believe they let him debate!” (laughing)
And it was his idea.
LaCivita: Yes, “anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”
Trump was tweaked that Biden got pushed out, though, he kept talking about it over and over again.
LaCivita: But he loves to — oh, and that’s the other campaign of firsts: the first Republican nominee, the first candidate for presidential history to beat two Democrat nominees in the same damn election.
What is it about Trump that appeals to working-class voters?
LaCivita: He’s talking about what they care about first and foremost. He’s talking about inflation, he’s talking about the cost of things. Here you have a billionaire candidate who is identifying better with working class than the nominee for the Democrat party? How is that possible? But the reason is because Trump speaks to and focused on the issues that matter. Not all the time. Right, he was prone to talk about other things. But on the issue of immigration, on the issue of the economy, on the issue of inflation — and he’s also speaking from the position of having done it. People remembered what it was like when he was president. It’s not like ’16 with "I’m gonna do." In ’24, it was "I did" and "I’ll do it again."
Did Democrats misread those voters as culturally liberal when they’re just not?
LaCivita: They made so many … If you go back and you look at when Biden was still in the race, one of the things that you would see is the third-party candidates were garnering in the teens combined.
But you guys were a little bit concerned about Kennedy still being on the ballot at the end in Michigan and Wisconsin though?
Fabrizio: The people who were most likely to vote for Kennedy were those persuadables that would otherwise vote for Trump because they wouldn’t vote for her. So the smaller we made that gap, the better for us.
Was she hurt by her gender?
Fabrizio: No. But it didn’t help her. We improved with women. Across the board. This whole notion that abortion was going to make the difference — you know what it did, it stoked motivation for their voters, but other than that …
LaCivita: They ran a campaign that was literally just geared toward the base. They ran a base campaign in a presidential election.
The one Harris debate. Did that make any difference even in the moment?
Fabrizio: Even though voters said she had won the debate, the race did not change in my polling. And, by the way, that was the reason not to do anymore. What were we going to gain?
Ok, but let’s be honest. He was tempted to do a second debate, wasn’t he?
Fabrizio: I mean, he’s always tempted.
How close did he come, Chris?
LaCivita: He didn’t. Never.
You guys knew that giving her a second debate was just an opportunity for her to tell her story?
Fabrizio: Why would we give her the chance? What are you going to tell people about Donald Trump they don’t already know by then?
Was there anything you guys were expecting her to do — that you were waiting for her to do — that she never did?
Fabrizio: Yes. Stick to a single fricking message. Find a message and ride it.
LaCivita: You have to remember, she spent the better part of the summer, the late summer after she was coronated, running ads about who she is, trying to define herself. And we were laying the wood to her. We were already defined.
And I was telling people from our standpoint, she is a blank canvas and we’re holding a bucket of paint. And we started throwing the paint on the canvas very early, defining her as dangerously liberal, out of touch.
And then they shifted their messaging to trying to attack Trump. It didn’t work. And it was all on the abortion topic. They threw that out there for a week — then they just kept on cycling stuff in and out, in and out. We were focused. We prosecuted four weeks of crime stuff. Then we moved to economics. And we stayed on economics all the way through, with the exception of introducing the trans ad.
What did you guys think in October when she starts talking about John Kelly?
LaCivita: Old news.
Fabrizio: If this is what they’re closing on, we win.
In fact, when she went to Nazi and J6, all that other stuff, one of our things is our goal was to get him not to engage with that. Because they’re trying to goad him into closing out that way instead of the way we wanted to close.
Did you find it easier this time around, Tony, to get Trump to respond to those kinds of pleas?
Fabrizio: Than ’16 or ’20? Absolutely, absolutely.
LaCivita: You don’t run for president three times and be president and not learn something.
And he had a level of faith in you guys.
LaCivita: 100 percent, he did.
Fabrizio: That doesn’t mean he doesn’t push back.
LaCivita: Correct. But he did have a level of confidence with his campaign team.
He wanted to do the rally at Madison Square Garden. But was he pissed afterwards about some of the speakers that were there?
LaCivita: I won’t say he was livid, but he was aggravated.
Fabrizio: Unforced error. And by the way, our reaction to it — I mean, obviously we weren’t happy that it happened — but it was like, yeah …
LaCivita: We’re going to put out a one-line statement. And that’s it. Move on.
Fabrizio: And the media just made —
And that was a Monday and then Biden’s garbage comment was Wednesday.
LaCivita: Saved it.
Biden saved the news cycle?
LaCivita: Yeah.
Let’s talk about Trump as a cultural phenomenon because I think of two things. The McDonald's drive-through and the garbage truck, both things that broke into the pop culture conversation, even beyond our world. Could any other candidate do that?
Fabrizio: MMA fights. Joe Rogan. We think of them as very specific things, but the symbolism — It says something about him that she couldn’t capture.
Where she’s doing the big speech or having the big debate, the conventional warfare, traditional campaign tactics. Donald Trump goes to the McDonald's drive-through. But in the year 2024, when we’re all living on our phones, a big speech at the Ellipse vs. Trump at the drive-through, which is going to break through?
LaCivita: Donald Trump is a man who has made a large part of his living in a visual medium: TV. He understands that politics is a visual medium. And so he looks at everything through the prism of that. And your average candidate for public office doesn’t look at the world that way.
He’s also a celebrity.
LaCivita: Defined outside the realm of politics. He has his own persona and definition outside of politics.
And because of that, some of the stuff he says …
LaCivita: He gets away with, he does.
He’s not graded as a politician. He’s graded as a celebrity.
Fabrizio: I know this is going to sound counterintuitive, but when he says stuff that makes people go — (grimaces) — it only reinforces that …
LaCivita: … He’s not a politician, exactly!
But there’s some stuff that he says, that you guys don’t necessarily like. For example, calling Elaine Chao “Chow Chow” or Youngkin sounded like an Asian name. Were there times where you were able to steer him away from saying that kind of stuff?
Fabrizio: I would say so, on the plane, there were times, yeah.
LaCivita: We had conversations. And he moved away from the Elaine stuff.
There were moments on the plane where he wanted to say something and he runs it by you and you guys were like ehhhh maybe no?
LaCivita: Yeah. And I’ll tell you the one time I didn’t was flying into Georgia [in August] when [Trump attacked Gov.] Brian Kemp. He said: "You know, if I do this, it’s going to make news." I said: "Yeah, it’s not a big deal."
Why didn’t you steer him away from doing that?
LaCivita: I misread the moment.
You regret that?
LaCivita: 100 percent.
It caused a headache for you.
Fabrizio: It turned out alright.
LaCivita: It was fine. In fact, when they made up, it was even better. But the next morning, I was banging my head against the wall. It was a missed opportunity.
Were there other moments that you guys regret?
Fabrizio: I mean obviously having the comedian on the [Madison Square Garden] stage. It creates a distraction. And again, we were trying to play error-free ball for the last couple of weeks because we felt pretty good about where we were. I don’t mean to sound like we were measuring drapes, in fact if anybody did that we would jump all fucking over them and say: "We haven’t won anything yet!"
What was the most sobering moment after the assassination?
LaCivita: We were at dinner at Bedminister, probably a week after it happened. He’s talking about it, I’m dumbfounded, almost speechless dumbfounded, and I was trying to say to him: “I’m so sorry." He’s like: “You believe it?! It went, zoom…"
Fabrizio: “Quarter of an inch, quarter of an inch.”
LaCivita: He’s not one to invoke God in conversation, but he made it very clear …
Fabrizio: Divine intervention.
Did you ever have a survey showing Trump down in any of the three Blue Wall states?
Fabrizio: Yes.
Wisconsin?
Fabrizio: Wisconsin and Michigan.
When?
Fabrizio: August.
But never after Labor Day?
Fabrizio: Ehhh, It varied. There would be variations. We would be up one, we would be down one. But then it got to the point where we went ahead and we stayed consistently ahead. Not by much, but consistently.
When was that point?
Fabrizio: October.
Was there data in crosstabs that either gave you reassurance or concern throughout the whole campaign? Like was there one demographic or one piece of that that you felt reliably as a tell?
Fabrizio: Yes. You’re going to laugh when I tell you this. What our performance was relative to the recall of 2020 vote. And in every survey, we were overperforming recalled performance.
There were people who voted third party in 2020 and there were people who didn’t vote in 2020, and they broke our way in 2024. And by the way, that spills into a lot of different things. But we would watch, how are we doing with Hispanics, how are we doing with Hispanic men. We knew consistently, we were getting the same number. Once the switch occurred, those numbers kind of settled down. And we knew we were going to break a record with Black men. We knew we were going to break a record with Hispanics. All of these things we knew. It was just a function of what it was going to be.
What do you think Susie meant to the campaign broadly, but also the candidate himself?
LaCivita: Stability.
Fabrizio: Trust.
LaCivita: He trusts her. Because people tried to drive a wedge and create distrust but all it did was reinforce her position.
So, on the timeline, you guys thought Biden’s going to fend this off. He’s going to hang in there. So when Biden drops …
LaCivita: But it doesn’t mean that we weren’t prepared for, because we really were. We had the oppo. We had the audio. We had the video. Libraries with everything ready. And by the way, going into the [GOP] convention, signage, video, all that stuff was ready.
Fabrizio: If they pulled the switch before the convention, we were ready. We had separate speeches written at that time.
Do you remember finding that 2019 ACLU video where she’s talking about trans prisoners?
Fabrizio: Actually, the guy who found it, Alex Pfeiffer. He came to me with it and he goes: "What do you think about this?" And I looked at it and said "Do we have any other backup on this? Somebody’s gotta write it." He goes: "I think I got CNN interested in it." He comes back and shows us the thing and then we gave it to the ad guy — in less than 24 hours, we had the script. And what’d you make, one change to the script?
LaCivita: Yeah. Because he said "Donald Trump’s for you, she’s for they/them." I said flip it. "Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you." That was the only change I made.
Who wrote it?
Fabrizio: A guy named Pat McCarthy.
What did Trump think personally of Biden as an opponent?
LaCivita: I don’t think he had any respect at all.
Fabrizio: I think he did a lousy job as president.
Did he talk about his age at all?
LaCivita: He would say he’s cognitively impaired. He said it all the fucking time.
But did he say something along the lines of "Joe’s really gone down hill the last few years?"
LaCivita: I’ve heard him say things like that.
What did he think of Kamala Harris as an opponent?
LaCivita: Not very bright.
He just didn’t think she was that formidable. But stronger than Biden?
Fabrizio: I don’t know about that. I think different than Biden.
How so?
LaCivita: Her numbers were going to improve. The Democrat numbers were going to improve because they had someone with a pulse.
That was his view?
LaCivita: Yeah.
And your polling showed that?
LaCivita: Yeah, she consolidated her base.
Is there one big thing that you think we’re missing in this campaign that was enormously consequential or at least significant?
LaCivita: You guys have written about the impact of the assassination attempt. But I don’t think people give enough credit to the fact that the world has a visual. It’s an iconic visual. But I don’t think people have given enough credit to that visual.
Him holding up his fist.
LaCivita: And what that visual means. And what the visual conveys. Not only about him, but the country as a whole. Americans get knocked down, but they always fight back. And that visual is as quintessential America as the fucking flag is.
Fabrizio: I am always amazed, I’ve learned not to be amazed, but he has this ability in most cases to put his finger on something. And you say to yourself: "Where did he come up with that?" But he just does. Then you test it and, holy shit, he’s right.
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