Trump advisers Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio said President-elect Donald Trump‘s selection of Vice President-elect J.D. Vance was a move for the future, in an interview that was the deepest dive inside the 2024 Trump campaign yet.
Fabrizio and LaCivita told Politico that Trump views Vance as the “torch-carrier” of the MAGA movement, and that he was a “deliberate” pick regardless of who the Democratic nominee for president was.
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“They have a really good personal relationship,” Fabrizio said. “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.’”
Vance has been known as Trump’s “envoy to Congress” in the weeks after the election, introducing Trump’s Cabinet picks to senators and relaying the president-elect’s feelings on the continuing resolution.
“His presence here, I think, is helpful as he’s talking to folks in the House, talking to folks in the Senate, and trying to figure out how you find a path out of the woods,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said of Vance.
Both agreed that Vance will have a “leg up” once Trump’s second term winds down in 2028.
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That advantage could help him beat a likely crowded field of Republicans then, which may include GOP heavyweights like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Nikki Haley again.
Fabrizio and LaCivita also elaborated on what Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024 did right and wrong. The pair agreed that blasting Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) was a gaffe, given he was the governor of a swing state.
But they also believed Trump listened to them far more often than in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
The two used Trump’s reaction to Vice President Kamala Harris‘s rhetoric about John Kelly’s accusations as an example of when Trump listened to the advice to keep out of it. Kelly said Trump was a fascist and admired Hitler’s relationships with his generals, in comments that haven’t been verified. The Harris campaign spent the last two weeks harping on these comments, committed to trying to connect Trump with Hitler. Fabrizio said their priority was getting Trump to stay away from that news cycle.
“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,” Fabrizio said. “Because they’re trying to goad him into closing out that way instead of the way we wanted to close.”
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“You don’t run for president three times and be president and not learn something,” LaCivita said.
Overall, they believed Harris’s campaign was ineffective because it lacked a coherent message. Fabrizio used the example of advertisements. In the last week of the campaign, Harris used 162 different television and digital spots while Trump only used 50.
Strategy from the Trump campaign also played a role. The pair of advisers believed persuadable voters were around 10% to 12% while the Harris campaign believed it was 4% to 6%. The Trump campaign hit those voters early and often, and it worked.
“We focused the entire campaign built around the issues that matter to the persuadable voters early,” LaCivita said. “Tony [Fabrizio] modeled them, and we tracked what the electorate, based on the persuadables, was thinking. And that drove all of our decision making.”
Fabrizio says he likes to summarize his campaigns with Trump like this: “In ’16 we got lucky, in ’20 we got screwed, in ’24 we earned it.”
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Ultimately, the pair agreed that Trump’s first assassination attempt, where a bullet clipped his ear, and he raised his fist into the air while bleeding, was significant to his win.
“You guys have written about the impact of the assassination attempt,” LaCivita said. “But I don’t think people give enough credit to the fact that the world has a visual. It’s an iconic visual.”