On Friday, the Republican National Committee officially voted to install Donald Trump’s hand-picked nominees to oversee the RNC’s operations — and, perhaps more importantly, its finances — in the run-up to this year’s elections.
After Trump and his supporters pushed out (now freshly resigned chair) Ronna McDaniel, the MAGA movement installed in her place a pair of even more ardent loyalists — exemplified by the former president’s own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who has vowed to spend “every penny” of the RNC’s money to elect Trump. Elected as her co-chair is Michael Whatley, an election denier who previously led the North Carolina GOP. And serving as the RNC’s chief of staff alongside those two is Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, a Swift Boat campaigner who’s functioned as the former president’s personal attack dog.
McDaniel got emotional during her final speech as chair, and in a nod to the right-wing backlash against her recent tenure, she pleaded for party unity going forward. “I’m gonna ask you to join me in uniting for the next eight months and committing everything you have” to making sure Republicans win in November, she said before handing her gavel to Whatley.
With that, Donald Trump has essentially turned the Republican Party into another of his family businesses. It’s certainly insular and (if you take Lara Trump’s word for it) singularly focused on her father-in-law’s success. For Republicans’ sake, they ought to pray the RNC doesn’t go the way of other ventures that had “Trump” on the label, like Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Airlines, etc., etc.
But it’s hard to see the Trump RNC faring much better. As I wrote last month, there are several ways a gold-plated, Trump-branded RNC is likely to go wrong for Republicans, both politically and financially.
What makes the timing of this takeover more noteworthy is that it comes on the same day Trump meets with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a bigoted authoritarian who has sat atop his Fidesz Party for most of the last 30 years and used anti-democratic means — like gerrymandering and attacks on press freedoms — to harden its political power in ways some fear could keep Orban in power indefinitely. (He’s already the longest-serving leader in the European Union at 14 years.)
Trump’s RNC takeover, paired with his Orban meeting, signals the conservative movement’s race toward a truly illiberal agenda. Like Orban, Trump has assumed full control of his party. Now, I suspect, comes the self-serving spending and another Republican platform that’s only designed to put Trump in the White House and to ensure he can stay there as long as he wants.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.