Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party’s apparatus should come with a stark warning: Be careful what you wish for. By remaking the Republican National Committee in his image, Trump is actually making it harder for him to win in November, not to mention the Republicans down ballot. Even if he does eke out a win, he’ll likely have fewer members of Congress to help him out as a result of his meddling.
Trump has long had a hold on the GOP, as can be seen from his near-clean sweep of the party’s presidential primaries. But with the installation of his ally Michael Whatley and daughter-in-law Lara Trump as heads of the Republican National Committee, he’s now formally in control of the party apparatus and quickly making his stamp on the organization.
An army of Trump-installed loyalists are replacing senior staffers to run the Republican National Committee. With the general election just eight months away, don’t expect this to look anything like a typical operation focused on getting out the vote, reaching out to undecided voters, standardizing messaging across campaigns and doing other normal tasks. Instead, this will be a group solely devoted to the glorification of Trump.
The problem is, this approach doesn’t work. Building the RNC as a cult of personality will lead to groupthink, as staffers make bad strategic moves because they can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t think like they do. It will lead to self-censoring, as staffers who have ideas that might rub Trump the wrong way will keep their heads down. And it will set the party up for another string of defeats, all the way up the ballot to Trump himself.
I ran the RNC from 2009 to 2011, so I know a thing or two about building a national party. If Trump’s campaign was based in reality, the RNC would spend the next eight months investing in competitive races up and down the ballot to build the kind of atmosphere in which a Republican presidential candidate can win handily. However, Trump’s sycophants are living on Earth Two, abandoning the party’s traditional infrastructure with a sole focus on helping him win the presidency.
What was once the Republican National Committee is now the Trump National Committee.
What we’re seeing unfold is the decapitation of the RNC. What was once the Republican National Committee is now the Trump National Committee.
The new players in charge are already undermining an attempt to broaden the party’s base. The Washington Post reports the RNC is scaling back its outreach to win over more minority voters — another self-defeating move that could hurt Trump’s own campaign. Leaders will also replace the party’s “Bank Your Vote” program aimed at getting Republicans to vote early and cutting into the Democrats’ advantage on get-out-the-vote efforts. Instead, the RNC will launch a new program targeting voters who are skeptical of Trump.
But the RNC's extreme makeover undermines this goal of attracting swing voters. This slice of the electorate has repeatedly rejected candidates who talk like Trump, act like Trump, and back Trump’s “Big Lie.” Yet far-right election deniers now have their hands on the organization’s levers of power.
This week, the RNC hired Christina Bobb to serve as senior counsel for “election integrity.” Her new title is an oxymoron. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Bobb peddled Trump’s lies of a stolen election. There is no integrity in that at all.
And she’s not the only one. Whatley, the RNC’s new chair, also spread disinformation about the 2020 election results. Following President Joe Biden’s victory, Whatley parroted Trump’s bogus claims of massive voter fraud in majority-Black cities. Those lies get you ahead in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, but not with most Americans — another self-own for Trump.
And then there’s Lara Trump, who somehow finds herself as RNC co-chair despite her thin resume. Many Republicans are brushing off her lack of experience. During the RNC leadership election this month, Committeewoman Beth Bloch said, “God does not call the qualified; he qualifies the called.”
But Lara Trump does not have the skills or training needed to craft an effective get-out-the-vote machine. Instead, she will serve as her father-in-law’s mouthpiece. She has insisted that Republican voters won’t mind if the RNC pays Trump’s legal fees. This month, RNC members even squashed a proposed resolution that would have banned the organization from covering Trump’s legal bills.
In the view of Lara Trump, all money raised by the RNC should be Trump’s for the taking.
In the view of Lara Trump, all money raised by the RNC should be Trump’s for the taking. During an appearance on Newsmax in February, she said “every single penny” from the RNC will go toward Trump’s re-election effort. She even claimed the “only job of the RNC” is to ensure Trump wins back the White House.
This declaration should ring alarm bells for down-ballot Republicans. If you’re a Republican not named Trump, don’t count on help from the RNC this year. The RNC’s purge this week included state directors and other low-ranking staffers. Who is going to replace them? A healthy party infrastructure should focus on winning down-ballot races at both the federal and state levels. That becomes a much harder lift without experienced boots on the ground in states across the country.
Since Trump turns off some Republicans and independents, he would benefit from a strategic investment in down-ballot races. Strong support for a GOP Senate or gubernatorial candidate in battleground states could help Trump, creating a kind of reverse coattails effect. A rising tide lifts all boats — unless you blow them up first and burn down the marina while you’re at it.
Trump seems unconcerned about consolidating the Republican coalition. When former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley dropped out of the GOP primary race — with a speech that explicitly said he needed to “earn” the votes of her supporters — there was no outreach from the Trump camp to welcome them back into the fold. Instead, he mocked Haley in a rant on Truth Social and said her voters were not welcome in his party.
At a rally in Virginia recently, Trump declared the Republican Party is “maybe 100%” MAGA. That is just not true. While most Republican voters remain in Trump’s camp, there are plenty of us who don’t drink the Kool-Aid. An NBC News exit poll from North Carolina’s GOP primary found 52% of Republican primary voters in the state don’t consider themselves part of the MAGA movement.
Trump calls anyone Republican who won’t kiss the ring a RINO, or “Republican in Name Only.” But his distortion of who counts as a Republican only hurts the party. And as he trashes the party infrastructure that could have helped him win in November, he may come to find that it hurts him too.
For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. ET on MSNBC.
