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Dan Scavino
American political advisor (born 1976) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Daniel Joseph Scavino Jr. (born January 14, 1976) is an American political advisor and former golf club manager who has served as the White House deputy chief of staff since 2025. Scavino served as the deputy chief of staff for communications from 2020 to 2021, as the senior advisor for digital strategy from 2019 to 2021, and as the White House director of social media from 2017 to 2019.
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Scavino studied speech communication at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, graduating in 1998. After graduating, he worked for The Coca-Cola Company and the pharmaceutical company Galderma. In January 2004, Scavino became the assistant manager of Trump National Golf Club Westchester. He was promoted to the club's general manager two years later and appointed as its executive vice president in 2008. Scavino joined Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign as an aide in June 2015, later becoming the campaign's director of social media. He retained his position in Trump's first presidency. In April 2019, he became the senior advisor for digital strategy. The following year, he was appointed as the deputy chief of staff for communications by chief of staff Mark Meadows.
After Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election, Scavino remained with him at Mar-a-Lago and assisted him politically. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol subpoeaned Scavino in September 2021; for evading the committee, the House of Representatives voted to hold Scavino in contempt of Congress in April 2022, though the Department of Justice declined to prosecute him after he negotiated the terms of the subpoena. By January 2023, Scavino had joined Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. In November 2024, Trump named Scavino as his deputy chief of staff.
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Early life and education (1976–1998)
Daniel Joseph Scavino[1] was born on January 14, 1976,[2][3] in Yorktown, New York.[1] Scavino was the son of Daniel and Katherine Scavino.[4] Daniel was a teacher at Mahopac High School, while Katherine was a stay-at-home mother.[3] He graduated from Yorktown High School,[5] where he played tight end and defensive end on the school's football team,[6] in May 1994.[5] He attended the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, majoring in speech communication.[7] As a freshman, Scavino was a caddie and bag room assistant at Briar Hall Country Club, where he met Donald Trump.[8] In his junior year, Scavino was a public relations intern for Walt Disney World in Florida.[7] A young Catholic, he was present for the World Youth Day in 1993; Scavino later recalled to Gannett News that he kissed Pope John Paul II's ring twelve years later, months before his death.[9] Scavino was named to the university's dean's list twice in 1997[10][1] and once in 1998,[11] when he graduated.[12] He continued to work at Briar Hall Country Club, then nascently acquired by Trump and renamed to Trump National Golf Club Westchester, through college.[3]
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Career
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Early career and Trump National Golf Club Westminster (1998–2015)
After graduating, Scavino worked for The Coca-Cola Company.[3] By August 2000, he had become a business development manager and was pursuing a master's degree in business management from Iona University. That month, Scavino got engaged to Jennifer Nathan, a pharmaceutical sales representative at Eli Lilly and Company.[12] They married at St. Columba Church the following month.[4] The Scavinos lived in Hopewell Junction, New York,[4] and had two children[3] before divorcing in January 2018.[8] Four years later,[3] Scavino was working at the pharmaceutical company Galderma.[13] In January 2004, Scavino returned to Trump National Golf Club Westchester as the club's assistant manager,[3] becoming the general manager by April 2006.[14] After the general manager Carolyn Kepcher resigned in August, he was named as acting general manager[15] before being appointed full-time in November.[13] In September 2008, he was appointed as Trump National Golf Club Westchester's executive vice president.[16] The Greater Southern Dutchess Chamber of Commerce named Scavino to its Forty Under 40 list in February 2008[17] and Golf Inc. named him to its Most Admired Operators list in May 2009.[18] Scavino led Trump's acquisition of the Branton Woods Golf Club, later Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley. From 2013 to 2015, he served as the director of Joe Torre's Safe at Home Foundation.[19]
Trump campaign (2015–2016)
After an unsuccessful attempt to start a consulting firm, Scavino told Donald Trump's son, Eric, that he was interested in joining the elder Trump's potential presidential campaign. In June 2015, Scavino joined Trump's 2016 campaign. Prior to Trump's announcement, Scavino's assignments involved finding large donors and forming relationships with the Republican National Committee. His role solidified as a general aide after the announcement, going on food runs to KFC and McDonald's.[6] By December, he specialized in posting videos to Vine.[20] A video of Curtis Sliwa he posted to Twitter in December was used by Trump to justify his assertion that "thousands and thousands" of American Muslims cheered in New Jersey during the September 11 attacks.[20] That month, he shared a 2012 video of Muslims protesting against a rally held by a far-right group Twitter, falsely stating it showed Muslims in Germany rallying for ISIS.[21]
In February 2016, Scavino became Trump's director of social media.[22] He held meetings with Republican National Committee members, including Randy Evans, in an effort to earn the favor of possible delegates.[23] In June, Scavino garnered controversy over an image of Hillary Clinton beside a red six-pointed star—believed by critics to be a Star of David—decrying her as the "most corrupt candidate ever". In a statement, Scavino claimed that he had found the image from a Twitter user critical of Clinton and inserted the star, believing it to be a sheriff's badge, using Microsoft Paint; according to Mic, the image was originally found on an imageboard website. Scavino later deleted the image and replaced the star with a circle.[24] According to Politico, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, the campaign manager Paul Manafort, and the communications advisor Jason Miller told Scavino to remove the post.[25]
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White House Director of Social Media and Senior Advisor (2017–2021)
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Scavino, among other Trump aides, was present in the South Lawn of the White House two days after the 2016 presidential election, in which Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.[26] He was named as the director of social media for Trump's first presidential transition the following day.[27] By December, Scavino had yet to be named to a position,[28] though he was expected to receive one.[29] On December 22, Trump named Scavino as his director of social media.[30] Prior to Trump's first inauguration, Scavino worked out a strategy with Twitter in which followers of the @POTUS account would also follow @POTUS44, an archive of Barack Obama's tweets.[31] The @POTUS account's biography noted that its posts were written by Scavino in addition to Trump, whose writings would be denoted with the signature "DJT". Trump retained his personal account, @realDonaldTrump; in contrast to @POTUS's "gracious, understated, and humble" demeanor, according to The New York Times, @realDonaldTrump was caustic, erroneous, and boastful.[32] Scavino had access to @realDonaldTrump and @WhiteHouse and their associated Facebook accounts. In February 2017, the Trump administration expanded its social media team.[33]
That month, the Project on Government Oversight requested that attorney general Jeff Sessions investigate Scavino for reposting a post from Trump that defended a fashion line established by Trump's daughter, Ivanka.[34] In April, Scavino urged Republicans to challenge representative Justin Amash in the 2018 United States House of Representatives election for Michigan's third congressional district.[35] The Office of Special Counsel found in June that Scavino's tweet violated the Hatch Act, though it took no action against him.[36] That month, lawyers for Twitter users blocked by @realDonaldTrump argued that the blocks violate the First Amendment, sending a letter to Scavino, among other aides.[37] He was named in United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2017), a federal lawsuit over the blocks, the following month.[38] Politico described Scavino as "one of the president's most loyal lieutenants"—by virtue of his role in imitating Trump's posts and providing Trump with an outlet—by June.[39] Amid internal strife over Sean Spicer's resignation as the press secretary—in addition to his resignation as communications director over Trump's decision to appoint Anthony Scaramucci as his successor—Scavino remained in the Office of Communications.[40]
Scavino was the only remaining Trump campaign staff member in the White House following the resignation of Hope Hicks as communications director in March 2018.[41] According to The New York Times, by June, Scavino was considering leaving.[42] Scavino's role was largely ambiguous; according to the White House, Trump primarily dictated posts for Scavino to send, though his critics argued that Scavino also wrote posts himself.[6] Scavino and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., often shared incendiary and alt-right content, according to Politico.[43] As director of social media, Scavino developed a persistent theme paying homage to Game of Thrones (2011–2019). He often praised Trump and, according to Politico, frequently monitored Reddit, including the site's /r/The_Donald community.[44] An investigation by The New York Times in November found that Scavino would assume control of @realDonaldTrump after 10 a.m. Eastern Time, when Trump would arrive in the West Wing, and give Trump suggested posts in degrees of provocativity. His access to Trump's social media accounts posed an opportunity for associates of Trump to amplify their messaging to Trump's audience.[45] In April 2019, Scavino became the senior advisor for digital strategy. Leading up to the shift in Scavino's position, Trump had relied on him less for posting on Twitter.[44] Senator Dianne Feinstein sought Scavino's testimony in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 elections, but she was rebuffed by Republicans.[46]
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In April 2020, Mark Meadows, the recently appointed chief of staff, reorganized the communications staff, naming Scavino as the deputy chief of staff for communications.[47] In the COVID-19 pandemic, Scavino and Jared Kushner were said to have been unconcerned over the possibility of contracting COVID-19.[48] In July, he posted a cartoon from Ben Garrison, a cartoonist barred from the White House after his work was found to have engaged in antisemitic tropes, depicting National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci as a faucet drowning the economy in apparent efforts to cancel the 2020 NFL season, impose permanent lockdowns, and close schools.[49] According to Maggie Haberman in Confidence Man (2022), Trump played a video prepared by Scavino downplaying COVID-19 at a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing.[50]
Scavino spoke at that year's Republican National Convention as one of several personal testimonials offered at the convention.[51] Trump was encouraged to participate in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump was defeated by Joe Biden, by Scavino, among other Trump allies.[52] The lawyer Jenna Ellis told Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutors that Scavino told her weeks after the election that Trump refused to leave; after Ellis pushed back, Scavino purportedly said that he and Trump didn't care.[53] According to testimony provided by Scavino in the Smith special counsel investigation, Scavino, joined by Trump aides, sought to calm Trump over his loss as a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol.[54] Scavino met with Trump to discuss strategy on how to get members of Congress to defy the election certification process, promoted the march that preceded the attack, and posted messages from White House accounts on the day of the attack.[55] He was the longest-serving Trump aide in the administration.[51]
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Post-government activities (2021–2024)
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Scavino remained with Trump after the 2020 election, leaving the White House for Mar-a-Lago after the inauguration of Joe Biden.[56] In February 2021, he was present in a meeting with Trump advisors to form a political action committee that would become Make America Great Again Action.[57] The following month, Scavino and Brad Parscale, Trump's former campaign manager, developed a plan for Trump to redevelop his online presence.[58] In September, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol subpoeaned Scavino,[55] though he was not given the subpoena for several weeks.[59] By November, Scavino had yet to provide documents to the committee.[60] Bennie Thompson, the committee's chair, said in December that Scavino was set to testify.[61] By March 2022, he had continued to evade the committee. In response, the panel began seeking a criminal prosecution for Scavino.[62] Days later, Biden rejected his effort to assert executive privilege.[63] The following month, the House of Representatives voted to hold Scavino in contempt of Congress.[64] The Department of Justice declined to prosecute him[65] after he negotiated the terms of the subpoena.[66]
By January 2023, Scavino had joined with Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.[67] His posts on social media included promoting the work of several meme creators known collectively as Trump's Online War Machine.[68] Additionally, Scavino served on the board of Truth Social, though he had left it by April 2024.[69] Concurrently, he was involved in the election obstruction investigation and the classified documents investigation into Trump; in the former, Scavino was subpoeaned in September 2022 as part of an intensified effort by the Department of Justice,[70] while in the latter, he appeared before a grand jury in December.[71] Scavino sought to avoid testimony in the election obstruction investigation; his effort was rejected by judge Beryl Howell, who compelled him to testify in March 2023,[72] and reaffirmed by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit weeks later.[73]
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White House Deputy Chief of Staff (2025–present)
In November 2024, The Washington Post reported that Scavino was expected to be named as the White House deputy chief of staff.[74] On November 13, Trump named Scavino as his deputy chief of staff.[75] In February 2025, Trump fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and named Scavino, among other loyalists, to the board.[76]
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