Meet the 5 people steering how Trump spends $530M ahead of midterms
WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump's top political operatives gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington on Tuesday, July 21, to map out strategy ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The meeting was the second in a series of regular sessions aimed at coordinating the GOP's messaging, candidates, and fundraising efforts as Republicans prepare for what they acknowledge will be a difficult election.
Trump did not attend, but the five people steering the room control both the machinery and the money behind his political operation, according to Axios. A source familiar with the matter told MS Now previously that the president is relying on a tight circle of senior advisers, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and her deputy, James Blair, to gut-check his political instincts.
The five advisers in the room: Tony Fabrizio
Tony Fabrizio, Trump's longtime chief pollster, delivered the meeting's core presentation on the state of the midterm map. Fabrizio is highly crucial to the midterms because he is driving the GOP's messaging and mapping out vulnerable swing districts.
Fabrizio has been Trump's pollster since 2016 and runs the firm Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, which also supplied the founding executive director of Trump's dark-money nonprofit.
Notably, the firm's ties run deeper into Trump's broader political network than just polling: David Lee, a partner at Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, also served as executive director and chief pollster for MAGA Inc, overseeing more than $320 million in outside spending, making the firm one of the most influential nodes in Trump's entire political-money network.
Fabrizio routinely provides the GOP with warnings about potential electoral vulnerabilities. For example, his polling highlighted that allowing certain health care premium tax credits to expire or ignoring national regulations around child safety and AI could cost the party. He has also mapped out how championing those popular issues could flip the political dynamic in their favor.
James Blair
James Blair, the White House's hands-on political operations chief, is the one actually charged with executing whatever plan comes out of these sessions. Blair oversees the massive financial advantage of Trump-aligned super PACs (like MAGA Inc). He also oversees the efficient allocation of a multi-million-dollar budget to key House and Senate races
A Florida native, Blair began his career as an aide to then-state House Speaker Richard Corcoran in Tallahassee. He later became deputy chief of staff for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Susie Wiles then recruited him for Trump's Florida operation during the 2020 campaign.
“Sometimes you can vote your conscience, other times you have to vote with the boss,” Blair once told CNN after the Indiana primaries, referring to Trump. “And he gets to decide when that is, because he’s elected party leader. My job is to implement that.”
Earlier this year, he took a leave from his formal White House position to focus on the midterms, highlighting how crucial his role has become.
Susie Wiles
Susie Wiles, Trump's longest-serving political adviser and current White House chief of staff, brings the administration's imprimatur to the table.
Her presence in the room signals the administration's direct institutional buy-in behind whatever plan the group settles on, and her relationships, which brought both Blair and, indirectly, much of the current operational team into Trump's fold, make her something like the connective tissue linking the West Wing to the outside political apparatus.
Chris LaCivita
Chris LaCivita, Wiles' former co-manager on Trump's 2024 campaign, rounds out the operational leadership.
A Marine Corps veteran wounded in the Gulf War, LaCivita has run super PAC efforts for Trump going back to 2020 and remains one of a small handful of strategists with direct, informal access to the president himself.
FBI Director Kash Patel (R) takes a picture next to Chris LaCivita ahead of US President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol on March 04, 2025 in Washington, DC (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Joe Gruters
Joe Gruters, the RNC chair installed under Trump and a longtime Wiles ally, ties the party apparatus directly into the room.
Gruters leads national campaign messaging and event planning to align candidates with core policy priorities, directs RNC fundraising and resource allocation for competitive congressional races and oversees election litigation, poll observer operations and nationwide voter registration policy reform.
His role in dealing with the various aspects of the election cycle makes him an integral part of this tight inner circle. His presence ensures that whatever the group decides doesn't stay confined to Trump's personal political network but gets pushed out through the RNC's broader machinery to House and Senate candidates nationwide.
Cabinet officials also attended, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio was absent due to travel in Manila.
A $530 million war chest: Securing American Greatness
The meeting's stakes involve both money and strategy.
Trump's super PAC and the Republican National Committee have a total of $530 million, and the advisers are deciding how, when and where to spend it.
This amount doesn't include a second, larger fund held by Securing American Greatness, Trump's political nonprofit. Axios claims that insiders say that fund contains hundreds of millions more.
Securing American Greatness runs as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit, which means it can rake in unlimited cash from both individuals and corporations without revealing its donors, classic “dark money.” So why does it matter that this nonprofit specifically avoids disclosure?
Voters may see ads or spending from this fund before November without ever knowing who financed them, unlike the $530M, which is disclosed by the Federal Election Commission and publicly traceable.
The group kicked off in March 2024, led by Trump allies, including Taylor Budowich. Budowich spent most of the previous year as Trump’s deputy chief of staff in the White House.
Budowich ran both groups (MAGA Inc. and Securing American Greatness) until late 2024, when he moved into the administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Personnel.
Day-to-day financial compliance at MAGA Inc. now falls to Chris Gantt, listed as the group's treasurer in Federal Election Commission filings, while legal and regulatory work, including the boundary between Securing American Greatness' dark-money spending and MAGA Inc.'s FEC-regulated activity, is handled in part by Compass Legal Group, records show. Overall strategic direction remains closely aligned with Trump's political advisers, including Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio.
Together, the disclosed $530 million and the undisclosed nonprofit reserves form the financial backbone of a midterm operation that Republicans privately concede faces long odds, given Trump's sliding approval numbers and the historical pattern of the president's party losing ground in Congress during a midterm year.
