Live from Virginia Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show – live weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Live Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream – host Fredericks welcomed Chris LaCivita to the show.
During the show, LaCivita highlighted the objectives of his national super PAC Preserve America which has spent 80 million dollars in five to six weeks’ time and aims to define Joe Biden and move the needle in favor of Trump.
Fredericks: Joining us now Chris LaCivita. He is one of the number one Republican GOP consultants of all time, and he’s from Richmond. And he’s with us now. Chris great to have you
LaCivita: John thanks. You’re waaay too kind. (Laughs)
Fredericks: Ah just trucking the truth baby. That’s it. You are the man. When things get tough, I remember at the convention in 2016 I was the chairman of Virginia. And at the convention in 2016, it was getting a little antsy there because Cuccinelli was trying to steal the votes and go to the unbind thing.
And who’d they call in? I get a call from LaCivita. He’s like okay, I gotta work the convention for Trump. Tell me what’s going on with this Cooch and Nellie scheme that’s going on? So they sent you there. So that’s what happens. Now you’ve got a major political action committee that just hit.
LaCivita: Right
Fredericks: That just hit. Tell us about it.
LaCivita: Well the group is called, and folks may have seen it’s called Preserve America. And it’s a super PAC. It’s a national super PAC that is obviously geared toward one thing. And its mission is relatively simple, which is to define Joe Biden. So we’ve been doing that in the battleground states. You know in Arizona all through TV. Through TV advertising and digital advertising.
But we’ve been engaged in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida heavily. And also Iowa and Wisconsin. We’ve been in Wisconsin twice. I filmed a TV ad in Kenosha. I mean so really it’s all the main battleground states. And we’ve up to this point in time as of tomorrow, we will have spent in a little under two months, 80 million dollars.
Fredericks: Wow
LaCivita: Oh yeah. It’s a pretty serious endeavor, and it puts us right there at the top in terms of spending. And again it’s, you know, they’re all contrast spots. You know we started off with a series of TV ads. One was a police detective whose daughter was killed because he was a cop. And he’s basically talking about the whole defund police movement and how Biden has basically stood silent.
We have a young Hispanic woman whose husband was a police officer and murdered. And that was an ad that we ran. We just finished running an ad with the Mueller family. You know their daughter Kayla was, um, kidnapped by ISIS and murdered. And so these are very emotional stories. Most of these are, you know, most of these are one minute ads.
So it gives us a little bit more time to, you know, communicate the actual message. So it costs money to be able to buy that kind of air time. And, you know, we don’t talk about our donors. But we have a few very generous people who really believe that the truth about Joe Biden needs to be told. So you know we’re very, very much engaged.
Fredericks: 80 million dollars you’ve spent. And you’ve only been in operation a month.
LaCivita: A little over, yeah.
Fredericks: I mean six, five, six weeks. Just a little over a month. But 80 million dollars? I mean you guys have hit the ground running here. So you really want to make a difference. A lot of these PAC’s, you always wonder about what the real objective is. It seems like your PAC’s objective is to move the needle for Trump big time and quickly right?
LaCivita: It’s the only objective. And you know again between now and election day. You know the messaging and of course, we’re hearing a whole lot about, oh the race is over. And of course, you know this was nothing, you know, just rewind you know four years ago. And it’s almost the same exact message that was being pushed on us. You know we do our own polling in all the battleground states.
And we see data that is the complete opposite of what, you know, I think a lot of these national press polls are showing, which are basically conducted by their marketing department. So you know it’s frustrating at times when you see what’s being pushed out there. But you know Americans will see through it. And again you know we have a clearly defined mission and we’re executing it.
Fredericks: What is, what’s your title there at the PAC?
LaCivita: I’m the president of it, the titles are inconsequential. (Laughs)
Fredericks: Yeah I know, but I have to say it on the air. So Chris LaCivita is the president of the Preserve America super PAC trying to define Joe Biden. But I tell you what, when you get to these polls you’re right because of course, I get to look at the numbers in Virginia. They’re much different than you get in some of the national media, because those are marketing polls. We show at about three-and-a-half here.
But what I’ve heard is we’re pulling ahead into Florida. We look good in Wisconsin. We got a shot in Michigan. We’re up in Minnesota and we’re tied in Pennsylvania. So a lot of the internal polls are showing great movement for Trump. And he’s been able to do that without defining Biden. I mean this is really the first super PAC that’s done that right?
LaCivita: I mean 100 percent yes. The president’s super PAC has done a pretty good job earlier on. That was that’s America First, and we work very closely with them. Of course, Linda McMahon runs that PAC, and she’s a dear long-time friend of mine. And we talk regularly. But for the sheer volume in this space of time that we’ve been engaged, no one’s been able to match what we’ve done.
Fredericks: 80 million dollars in five months to get all these one minute ads. But I also love the fact that you’re doing one minute ads. I mean that’s the thing of the past. Everybody’s doing the 30 second ads now, because you know save money or whatever. But they get more ads in. There are certain things you just can’t do in 30 seconds
LaCivita: No.
Fredericks: You know one minute justifies it right? It gives it the justice
LaCivita: It does. I mean, I think you could go to preserveamericapac.com and check out some of our ads, they’re up online, and you’ll see the difference. One minute allows you to convey an emotion. It allows you to convey a lot of things that you just can’t do in 73 words. Which, in 73 words, is what you get in a 30 second ad. And it’s also important to convey that in all of our ads these are not actors.
These are real people in the real world who have, you know, a story to tell. So that’s an important component of it as well. But again, like I was saying earlier, we work very closely with the super PACs and the other super PACs that are out there, so that we all have an idea of. you know. what we’re doing and where and those types of things. But you know we hope to just keep it going until election day and make a difference.
Listen to the full show here:
https://youtu.be/z8kcGqv43zM
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