Editor’s Note: The original version of this article mistakenly reported that LaCivita’s firm had received a total of $22 million from Trump’s campaign and affiliated PACs. Based on a further review of FEC records, the correct total is $19.2 million. The Beast regrets the error. The article has also been updated to make clear that payments were to LaCivita’s LLC not to LaCivita personally.
Donald Trump considered firing his campaign manager Chris LaCivita after a bombshell report by the Daily Beast enraged the former president in the final stretch of his 2024 White House bid.
Sources told The Atlantic allegations that LaCivita’s company had taken in $19.2 million from his work on the Trump campaign and related super PACs, left Trump “fuming” and feeling like the story “made him look like a fool.”
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The Beast’s story, published on Oct. 15, reportedly fueled the GOP presidential nominee‘s paranoia about disloyalty within his inner circle. Trump’s reaction came at a time when his controversial political strategist Corey Lewandowski was raising questions about the campaign’s spending.
News of LaCivita’s company’s payday left Trump ranting to friends and claiming he would fire the campaign manager, and potentially his entire team, if it weren’t so close to Election Day. However, one campaign staffer was ultimately fired after attempting to blow the whistle on what she called “grift and greed” and an alleged “bugging plot” by top campaign officials.
The former president’s spokesman, Stephen Cheung, denied that Trump was angered by the Beast’s report and said “Everyone recognized it came from disgruntled individuals.”
In The Atlantic report, LaCivita described the number as “defamatory” and “manufactured out of thin air.”
“Not only is the... number manufactured out of thin air,” LaCivita told me in a statement, “but it’s defamatory.”
But LaCivita told friends he felt like he was in an episode of The Apprentice waiting to be told “you’re fired” during a ride to the airport in the back of Trump’s limo on Oct. 18, according to The Atlantic. Moments later, on Trump’s plane, the former president reportedly pulled out a printed copy of Beast’s story during a profanity-laced meeting in which LaCivita defended himself.
Trump campaign aides told the Atlantic’s Tim Alberta that the GOP presidential candidate took to calling LaCivita “my $22 million man!” in what Alberta wrote was a “teasingly” but conspicuous dig.
Advancing Strategies, LaCivita’s company, has no apparent website and appears to be headquartered in his home, which is outside Richmond, Virginia, according to state corporate records.
While senior aides told The Atlantic that the multi-million dollar scandal was somewhat settled, a tweet by LaCivita from Jan. 6, 2021, unearthed the week after the Beast’s story, shattered the pair’s already fragile relationship.
The resurfaced social media message, liked by LaCivita, called for Trump to be removed via the 25th Amendment, prompted the former president to allegedly tell several people that his campaign manager was “dead to him.” While LaCivita would stay on for the remainder of the campaign, he would have no place in a second Trump administration or his future political operation.
Discord in Trump’s campaign reportedly extends beyond LaCivita and characterized much of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
This paranoia and tension, staffers say, transformed the home stretch to the election into the “most unpleasant of their careers,” with some reconsidering their once-aspirations of serving in a Trump White House.
