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Inside the Trump campaign’s strategy to seize on Biden’s missteps [1]

['Geoff Bennett', 'Ian Couzens']

Date: 2024-07-12 18:52:06-04:00

Tim Alberta:

I think that you have to realize that, in politics, there are people who are sort of practitioners, there are folks who will sort of latch onto campaigns and maybe offer some advice on polling or on strategy or speechwriting or whatever else, but then there are sort of a select class of people who are truly the sort of the brains behind an operation, the people who can really run campaigns at a tactical, mechanical level in a way that few others can.

And Susie Wiles, in particular, is someone who has earned that reputation over a number of years. I think I'd mostly point, Geoff, to the fact that Florida, which had for decades been regarded as the nation's top electoral prize, is no longer even on the table.

Democrats have conceded the state of Florida in this election. They're not even playing there. And when you wonder why, the answer is Susie Wiles. She, more than anyone, had engineered campaigns on behalf of Republicans in Florida that effectively made the state not competitive anymore for Democrats, because Republicans were winning so many nonwhite voters in those elections.

She has taken some of that same modeling, some of that same targeting approach and put it into practice in this Trump 2024 campaign. And then I think her partner, Chris LaCivita, he is best known as the ad maker who created the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that really devastated John Kerry back in 2004.

And LaCivita is best understood as a shrewd and ruthless operative who really understands how to target an opponent's weaknesses. And that is really the combination, Wiles and LaCivita, these unique skill sets, they are two of really the most feared operators I have ever been around in politics.

And, together, they have really, I think, streamlined the Trump operation. And, also, I think that they have streamlined Donald Trump a little bit. I think that they have been able to bring him into alignment with their goals as a campaign in ways that no one else has been able to.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inside-the-trump-campaigns-strategy-to-seize-on-bidens-missteps

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