MILWAUKEE — A senior Trump campaign official said Thursday that the 2024 presidential election won’t end until Inauguration Day, rather than Election Day, Nov. 5, when voters across the country go to the polls to cast their ballots and the results are typically predicted.
Chris LaCivita’s claims at the Politico event are noteworthy given former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Joe Biden, and the subsequent violent storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021.
This is also significant because the U.S. Department of Justice has charged that Trump conspired with lawyers and election officials in seven states to create false slates of electors after Election Day 2020. According to the indictment, these slates were to be delivered to Vice President Mike Pence during the regular certification by a joint session of Congress in early January after the presidential election.
“It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath. It’s not over until then. It’s not over on Election Day, it’s over on Inauguration Day, because nobody expects anything to not happen,” LaCivita, the Trump campaign co-chair, told Politico’s Jonathan Martin in an extended interview that was open to reporters and attendees at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and streamed live.
Trump did not attend Biden’s inauguration, and he and many Republican lawmakers have continued to falsely claim that Biden won.
Martin was in the middle of asking about Democrats’ prospects on Election Day when LaCivita interrupted him.
“It’s possible that Donald Trump loses,” Martin continued. LaCivita said the campaign will continue to focus on these issues.
Moments later, Martin asked LaCivita whether he thought it was politically wise for Trump to continue his campaign to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters.
“It’s always surprising that you guys bring this up,” LaCivita said, referring to reporters.
“That’s not true,” Martin replied.
“In a lot of interviews, this is the first question you ask,” LaCivita said. “We’re talking about important issues right now: Social Security, protecting Social Security and Medicare, closing the border. We have a lot to talk about and that’s what we’re focusing on.”
“In Chris LaCivita’s perfect world,[Trump]would never say the words ‘January 6th hostages’ again,” Martin continued.
LaCivita responded immediately, repeating, “Social Security, Medicaid, border closures, deportations, yes, I said it, all of them.”
President Trump told reporters in March that he was open to cutting Social Security and other entitlements as a solution to the national debt.
Election fraud is a false claim
Trump repeatedly made false claims of election fraud in the months after the 2020 election and lost numerous court cases in states he claimed he won.
The dispute escalated into political violence on January 6, when a mob of Trump supporters armed with improvised weapons overpowered U.S. Capitol Police and tried to stop Congress from certifying the election results.
The historic criminal indictment against a sitting former U.S. president, handed up by a federal grand jury in August 2023, charges Trump with felony conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding.
President Trump successfully delayed the federal election subversion case by appealing the motion to dismiss based on presidential immunity all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on July 1 that former presidents enjoy broad immunity for acts committed in official capacity, raising major questions about what kind of evidence can be used in such prosecutions.
How to use the assassination attempt
Reactions to Saturday’s assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, have shifted over the first three days of the Republican National Convention, from initial concerns about political violence to rallying the incident as a symbol of how a “strong Trump” could reshape America, as Donald Trump Jr. put it on Wednesday night.
Trump supporters wore fake ear bandages as a political symbol at the Republican National Convention, along with red “Make America Great Again” hats.
“How do you harness the energy and emotions you feel when something like that happens? How do you harness it to get you where you need to be?” LaCivita said.
“How do you use that to win an election or to unite the country?” Martin continued.
“I think it’s both,” LaCivita said.
The campaign co-chairs declined to answer a question about whether Trump would use his Republican National Convention speech to try to tell his supporters not to believe the conspiracy theory circulating online that Democrats were behind the shootings. Martin asked LaCivita whether he agreed that Trump’s toning down his criticism of the opposing party was “good for the country.”
LaCivita said the campaign was planning to make Trump’s speech “a positive one.”
“That means there aren’t enough facts. It’s not just our job to talk about the facts as a result of what happened,” LaCivita said, joining a chorus of critics of the Secret Service and calling for the resignation of its chief.
Hours after Saturday’s shooting, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was announced Monday at the Republican National Convention as Trump’s running mate, posted on social media that “today is not just an isolated incident.”
“A central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric directly led to the assassination attempt on President Trump,” he wrote.
Project 2025 is a ‘thorny issue’ for Trump
Of the themes permeating the RNC, the leading conservative wing, Project 2025, has plagued the Trump campaign in ways LaCivita described as “troubling.”
The 922-page document, led by the Heritage Foundation, lays out a roadmap for a presidential transition, a plan to reform government operations, lobbying Congress for nationwide abortion restrictions and restoring “protections for American families and children that are central to American life.”
The group held an all-day policy festival on Monday five blocks from the Republican National Convention site.
Trump has denied having any ties to the project, even though former Trump administration officials have disclosed their previous roles in project documents. A CNN analysis found that 140 people who worked for Trump collaborated on Project 2025.
LaCivita said claims that Trump was connected to the project were “complete bullshit.”
“They are not speaking on behalf of the campaign.”
