The first sign of trouble came the week after the 2023 elections, after Democrats fared unexpectedly well in key races in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. CNBC reported that some on Team Trump were beginning to blame Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel for the party’s difficulties, and Donald Trump himself had grown “increasingly sour” on McDaniel, despite the fact that it was his idea to put her in this position.
More recently, the former president has been more publicly explicit about his perspective. Last week, Trump said, in reference to the RNC’s leadership, “I would say right now there’ll probably be some changes made.” A day later, he added that McDaniel “knows” it’s time to step aside.
Amidst the uncertainty about the RNC’s future, Trump wrote on his social media platform, “Ronna is now Head of the RNC, and I’ll be making a decision the day after the South Carolina Primary as to my recommendations for RNC Growth.”
South Carolina’s primary is Feb. 24. Evidently, the former president didn’t want to wait that long. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Michael Whatley to be the next head of the Republican National Committee and backed his daughter-in-law Lara Trump for co-chair. … Whatley is the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party.
The news doesn’t come as too big of a surprise. The New York Times reported last week that Trump was “likely” to back Whatley as McDaniel’s replacement, adding:
Mr. Trump likes Mr. Whatley for one overwhelming reason, according to people who have discussed him with the former president: He is “a stop the steal guy,” as one of the people described him. He endorses Mr. Trump’s false claims about mass voter fraud and Mr. Trump believes he did a good job delivering North Carolina, a 2020 swing state, to him.
As New York magazine’s Jon Chait noted, Lara Trump “has likewise demonstrated her complete reliance on her father-in-law and energetically endorsed even his most deranged election-conspiracy theories.” And therein lies the significance of this: Donald Trump is envisioning an RNC that won’t just back his candidacy, he wants a party apparatus that’s similarly committed to his conspiratorial lies. As for the next steps, a Times report added that the former president “cannot simply appoint” Whatley and his daughter-in-law to these RNC positions, and after McDaniel steps down, there will have to be an intraparty election to replace her. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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