We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

WE ARE 100% INDEPENDENT AND READER-FUNDED. FOR A GUARANTEED AD-FREE EXPERIENCE AND TO SUPPORT REAL NEWS, PLEASE SIGN UP HERE, TODAY.

A Super PAC supporting President Trump’s election efforts, funded by billionaire Elon Musk, has hired a swathe of former DeSantis for president activists, including the chiefs of the Florida Governor’s disastrously run political action committee ‘Never Back Down.’

The details, which were quietly reported on by the New York Times in July, have been further teased out by Puck News this week, with author Tara Palmeri noting:

“…it baffled many inside the Trump campaign when Chris LaCivita blessed the mid-July shake-up at Musk’s America PAC. DeSantis’s former campaign manager Generra Peck and former senior advisor Phil Cox subsequently fired all the existing vendors, including canvassers, and dismantled the existing ground operation, only to bring in their own people just a month and a half before early voting is set to begin.”

Trump was reportedly furious with the move to hire a cadre of DeSantis backers, especially given the Trump campaign’s early pledge that none of those people would ever get jobs with Trump or his administration. Now, it seems, they’ve hired almost all their top associates, with the ‘P2‘ firm run by Cox and Peck being used as a primary group for the Musk-backed America PAC.

“Also involved… is Charlie Spies, a senior election lawyer for the Republican Party,” The New York Times revealed. The National Pulse has reported on Spies and his previous anti-Trump positions, leading to his ouster from an RNC role recently handed to him by Trump campaign chiefs Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

The National Pulse first reported on Cox, his group, and its relationships with the Bush, Rove, Romney, and Ryan families back in April 2023. Now, Cox is inside the Trump campaign, alongside a number of other leading DeSantis-world names such as Peck and failed pollster Ryan Tyson.

The move was celebrated by LaCivita, who tweeted out the New York Times report, adding: “…the New Program 100% better than the old gang. Solidly support this effort!”

The tweet appears to have been a dig at former vendors who were Trump loyalists. LaCivita is no stranger to pushing out pro-Trump voices and replacing them with neoconservative and establishment names, having done similar at the RNC. He has also openly trashed Project 2025–made up of primarily former Trump White House staff–and funneled cash through outside groups like Preserve America, funded by Miriam Adelson.

“It’s a limp-dick version of Never Back Down, an organization that everyone universally sees as a failure,” a Trump campaign source told Puck this week. “It’s a model you ridiculed, and then you bring in the same team to replicate it?”

“[Cox and Peck] pulled a power move, but it was in the middle of July, when all of this stuff was going on with Biden and Trump,” said another source, speaking on why the infiltration of DeSantis characters had not been reported on sooner.

The reliance on DeSantis ally-run outside groups has caused all manner of consternation in Trump-world, with many seeing the reliance on the PAC as a repetition of the same mistake made by Governor DeSantis, who hired Jeff Roe and others to try the same system, instead of running the operations centrally, out of the campaign itself, as is traditional.

The New York Times reported America PAC’s involvement in Wisconsin back in July. Since the takeover, Trump appears to have slumped against Harris in the Badger State.

The report also claimed that “America PAC has also been active or is planning to be active in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.”

The Trump campaign is also relying on more loyal voices and groups, including Chris Buskirk’s Turnout for America and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, to aid its efforts across the country.


show less

A Super PAC supporting President Trump’s election efforts, funded by billionaire Elon Musk, has hired a swathe of former DeSantis for president activists, including the chiefs of the Florida Governor’s disastrously run political action committee ‘Never Back Down.’

show more