Chris LaCivita

Chris LaCivita is a Republican political strategist and former U.S. Marine. He was the chief strategist for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, and co-managed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign alongside Susie Wiles.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

The 2004 campaign against John Kerry’s military record gave the language a verb — “swift boating,” which entered dictionaries as a term for an unfair or untrue political attack — and it is a widely cited pre-social-media example of an outside group setting the terms of a presidential race through advertising and the coverage that advertising generated. The attack ran through television spots and earned media rather than platforms, but the mechanism it demonstrated is the one that later moved online.

Trump 2024

LaCivita worked on state and federal campaigns over two decades, including Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential run. He was a senior strategist at the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. before joining Trump’s re-election campaign in late 2022, which he ran with Susie Wiles.

In February 2024 he was appointed chief operating officer of the Republican National Committee, part of an effort to merge the campaign and the party committee into what one account of the decision described as a “seamless operation.” He was expected to split his time between the two and act as the liaison between them.

Continuity

When Republicans questioned Tim Walz’s military record in 2024, NPR noted that “the same Republican operative has had a hand in both” that episode and the 2004 campaign against Kerry. LaCivita’s own comment on the comparison was: “Birds of a feather will be tarred together.” Whether the approach worked as well in 2024 as in 2004 is contested.