Bossie grew up in Massachusetts. He attended Towson State University and the University of Maryland, but dropped out before graduation. When he was 18 years old he volunteered in Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign.
Career
A volunteer firefighter in his youth, Bossie dropped out of university to pursue politics. Bossie was the youth director of Sen. Bob Dole's 1988 presidential campaign.
During his tenure at Citizens United, which he had joined as a researcher after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, the organization focused increasingly on producing film documentaries through its Citizens United Productions division. Their films have included:
Citizens United hoped to begin distribution of the feature film in January or February 2008. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 made that an unlawful electioneering communication. They sued, unsuccessfully, for an injunction to prohibit the Federal Election Commission from enforcement of those provisions of BCRA on First Amendment grounds. In a 2010 landmark decision, the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission for Citizens United. For-profit corporations and not-for-profit corporations may now advertise and broadcast messages of a political nature without limits on how much they can spend and with few limits on the timing and nature of the messages.
Trump campaign
In September 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump hired Bossie to be his new deputy campaign manager.
Political commentator
In June 2018, Bossie, a regular guest on Fox News programs, said that African-American co-guest Joel Payne was "out of his cotton-picking mind.” He later apologized. Fox News suspended him for two weeks, calling the remarks "deeply offensive and wholly inappropriate." In an April 17, 2020 Fox News editorial tribute to Donald Trump's leadership, Bossie falsely asserted that "we’ve managed to flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic". The average daily death rate from COVID-19 in the US at the time was more than 4,000 dead per day, by far the worst rate to that point in the pandemic. Bossie made other false statements in praise of Trump, particularly that "he has given governors the ability to tailor the reopening to the needs of their individual states". Only days earlier Trump had claimed falsely that he has "total authority" over when states would rescind their quarantine rules; despite Bossie's false assertion, the president cannot give governors that ability since the governors already possess the authority in their own right.
Publications
Bossie is the author of The Many Faces of John Kerry, a hostile look at the Democratic nominee in the 2004 United States presidential election, then-Senator John Kerry. He has also written Intelligence Failure, a piece alleging failings on the part of the national security apparatus during the Clinton Administration in the years before September 11, 2001, when a terrorist attack caught the Bush Administration totally unprepared. Bossie is also the author of the 2008 publication Hillary: the Politics of Personal Destruction and co-author of the 2000 release Prince Albert: the Life and Lies of Al Gore with Floyd Brown. At the convention of the Tea Party movement Convention, Bossie debuted the documentary Generation Zero, focusing on the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and insinuating that it was caused by the supposed selfishness of the entire Baby Boomer generation. The documentary, produced by Bossie for Citizens United Productions, had been written and directed by Steve Bannon. In December 2017, Let Trump Be Trump, a memoir co-authored by Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, was published by Center Street. The book chronicles their experiences working on Donald Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign.
Personal
David met his wife, Susan, through his political work. They reside in Montgomery County, Maryland with their four children. Bossie received the Ronald Reagan Award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 1999. He also was ranked number two in Politico's top 50 most influential people in American politics in 2015, tied with Charlie Spies.
