How Trump's longest-serving aide and former golf caddie is defying the administration's curse and outlasting all his coworkers

Michal Kranz

Apr 5, 2018, 00:15 IST

How Trump's longest-serving aide and former golf caddie is defying the administration's curse and outlasting all his coworkers

REUTERS/Jim Bourg/Files

White House social media director Dan Scavino is one of President Donald Trump's closest advisers.

With former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks' departure from the administration of President Donald Trump last month, Trump lost a major player in his inner circle who had served him since the early days of the campaign.

But another person in Trump's orbit has been by his side since way before his 2016 campaign began - White House social media director Dan Scavino.

His relationship with Trump runs all the way back to 1990, when a 16-year-old Scavino was hand-picked to be Trump's caddie. Since that chance selection, Scavino has rocketed high into the ranks of Trump's communications team, and today is part of a small group of people in charge of the White House's messaging.

Here's how Scavino went from cleaning clubs to managing Trump's social media:

Scavino's family hails from northern Italy. His great-grandfather entered the US through Ellis Island in the early 1900s and soon settled in New York City.

After Trump began criticizing what he called "chain migration," many pointed out that Scavino's family itself had came to the US through this process. After his ancestor Vittorio came to New York in 1904, other members of his family followed over the next few years.

Scavino was born in 1976 and grew up in the New York City metropolitan area.

When he was 16 years old, Scavino was working a summer job cleaning golf clubs at New York's Briar Hall Country Club in the lower Hudson Valley when the country club got an unexpected visitor.

It was 1990. Briar's Hall was headed for foreclosure, and Trump was interested in expanding his golf empire. When the future president dropped by, Scavino was in the right place at the right time, and was chosen to be his golf caddie for the day.

"I'll never forget the day his limo first pulled up," Scavino said years later. "I was star-struck. I remember his first gratuity. It was two bills ― two hundred-dollar bills. I said, 'I am never spending this money.' I still have both bills."

Scavino went on to graduate from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 1997, and then worked several jobs in his 20s, including on in the sales department of a Coca-Cola bottler. But his encounter with Trump in 1990 soon bore fruit for him.

In 2004, Trump hired Scavino to be the assistant manager of the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester where they had first met, and he became the executive vice president of the club in 2008.

Scavino even appeared on an episode of Trump's reality show "The Apprentice."

When Trump was musing a serious presidential run, Scavino told him he would "drop everything" to work with him on the campaign. In July 2015, Trump asked him to join.

In February 2016, Trump chose Scavino to head his social media campaign, which had been growing in size and scope. But while he headed up the effort as a whole, he let Trump be Trump on Twitter.

It seems this has been the secret to Scavino's success. "He doesn't run anything by me," Scavino told CNN in 2016. "We're a different campaign."

Scavino traveled with Trump for months, and sometimes took dictation from him for his tweets.

But the campaign was not without controversy — not only did Trump's unfiltered messaging make waves, but the campaign came under fire for several allegedly offensive tweets.

On one occasion, Trump tweeted a picture of then-2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with the text "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" inside of a six-point star. The symbol was seen as anti-Semitic, and the campaign eventually changed the graphic.

Shortly after Trump's victory in the election, the president-elect named Scavino White House Director of Social Media.

Scavino has become a vital part of Trump's administration, and even followed him to places like the Vatican to meet Pope Francis last year.

But Scavino couldn't stay out of trouble for long. He violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch officials from being involved in electoral activity, when he sent a tweet urging the defeat of Rep. Justin Amash. He was warned that an other violation "could result in further action."

In September 2017, he tried to warn people in Florida about Hurricane Irma, but accidentally tweeted video of wrong storm. The Miami International Airport replied to his tweet noting the error.

In January, Scavino's personal life took a hit when he and his wife Jennifer filed for divorce. They had been married for 18 years and have two children.

But despite his troubles, it looks like Scavino's stint as Trump's right-hand man on social media won't end anytime soon.

Scavino attributes social media as one of Trump's greatest strengths. "He is in the White House today because of social media," Scavino told Fox News. "It's what won him the White House, and he's just gonna keep tweeting away."

Hicks and Scavino have been two of Trump's most trusted confidantes. With her out of the White House, Scavino is now the only aide who's been with Trump since the beginning.

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