The Axe Files with David Axelrod · The Institute of Politics & CNN Podcasts

Ep. 602 — Chris LaCivita

·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

Chris LaCivita recounts the day shrapnel tore through his face in Kuwait, a moment that reshaped his perspective forever.

LaCivita arrives with a reputation already in the room. Axelrod frames him as a decorated Marine Corps veteran who found politics after the Marines, then became known as a sharp, hard-edged strategist. That setup matters because the interview keeps circling back to conflict: how LaCivita talks about it, how comfortable he sounds inside it, and how much of campaign work he sees through that lens. Swift Boat hangs over the conversation. Axelrod calls the 2004 campaign against John Kerry notorious, the kind of negative media that became its own shorthand. LaCivita does not soften much. When Axelrod presses him on accountability and Trump's timeline, LaCivita answers by arguing that Trump's statements do not fit the timeline others are trying to impose. Axelrod keeps pushing, but he does not turn the room into a cable-news brawl. That restraint gives the exchange its bite. It becomes a close look at how a political operative talks when responsibility, loyalty, and consequences are all on the table. The 2020 campaign is the hinge. LaCivita describes Preserve America as a close to $120 million super PAC that ran ads against Biden in battleground states when Trump's campaign had no money for ads. That lands. In his telling, television spending is not background noise. It is the thing keeping a broke campaign visible. Tony Fabrizio then enters as the connector. Through Fabrizio, LaCivita meets Susie, whom he already knows by reputation from Florida. He remembers her as a major Florida consultant, then describes a quick rapport that turns into talk about TV ads and campaign work. By the end, LaCivita has won the big race and still sounds drawn to the machinery of campaigns. The episode does not hand out a neat moral verdict. It leaves him as someone who talks about politics as combat, business, craft, and calling, all in the same breath.

As heard by us

A solid political interview that keeps the focus on campaign mechanics and backstory.

David Axelrod treats Chris LaCivita less like a talking point than a working political operator, tracing him from Marine service through the 2004 Swift Boat fight and into Trump's re-election effort.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want the playbook behind a decorated Marine Corps veteran turned Trump strategist with battle-tested campaign scars?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Axe Files with David Axelrod