President-elect Donald Trump's campaign strategists Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio sat for a tell-all interview with Politico's Jonathan Martin — and among much else, shared their biggest regrets on the campaign trail, and the moments they felt Trump made unforced errors that could have hurt his chances.
In particular, there were two big ones, they said.
"There were moments on the plane where he wanted to say something and he runs it by you and you guys were like, ehhhh, maybe no?" asked Martin.
"Yeah," said LaCivita. "And I’ll tell you the one time I didn’t was flying into Georgia [in August] when [Trump attacked Gov.] Brian Kemp. He said: 'You know, if I do this, it’s going to make news.' I said: 'Yeah, it’s not a big deal.'
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That series of attacks on a governor popular in Georgia were born of Trump's lingering frustrations Kemp couldn't rig the election for him in 2020 — but it had many of his allies panicked he would lose the state. Asked why he didn't try to get Trump to stop the feud, LaCivita said "I misread the moment" and "100 percent" regretted it — although ultimately Trump and Kemp made up and he was able to carry the state after losing it by just about 11,000 votes last time.
"It was fine," said LaCivita. "In fact, when they made up, it was even better. But the next morning, I was banging my head against the wall. It was a missed opportunity."
The other big regret, Fabrizio interjected, was putting right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe onstage at Madison Square Garden, because of the racist joke he made about Puerto Rico that kicked off a panic and recriminations among the GOP.
"I mean obviously having the comedian on the stage," said Fabrizio. "It creates a distraction. And again, we were trying to play error-free ball for the last couple of weeks because we felt pretty good about where we were. I don’t mean to sound like we were measuring drapes, in fact if anybody did that we would jump all fucking over them and say: 'We haven’t won anything yet!'"