It's Trump's party and he'll grab what he wants to
Lara Trump, the new co-chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks as chairman Michael Whatley, left, and outgoing co-chair Drew McKissick, right, listen at an event Friday in Houston. Credit: AP/Michael Wyke
Donald Trump, as boss of all GOP bosses, has installed his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She told Newsmax last month: “Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC: That is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.”
As if there will be nobody else running anywhere on the Republican line.
Her partner in the party, Trump-approved chairman Michael Whatley, has been uttering reflexive words of fealty for years. In November 2020, as the plot to nullify Joe Biden’s election developed, Whatley, then North Carolina GOP chairman, said: “We do know that there was massive fraud that took place."
They knew no such thing.
Donald Trump rules the party as he once did the White House — chaotically. He purges underlings who might tell him truths he dislikes hearing. With his new leaders in place, the RNC promptly fired more than 60 employees, about a third of the staff.
The previous chair, Ronna McDaniel, had to go. She crossed him by refusing his demand she cancel the party’s primary debates. Debates are standard in American elections, but her patron didn’t feel like it. “She’s been kissing his butt for years,” Bill Palatucci, a New Jersey committeeman, told the Washington Post. “But loyalty is a one-way street with Donald Trump.”
And in case you thought this party is about anyone else, word has leaked out that the RNC plans to move digital and fundraising teams to South Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago manse.
He’s taken the Grand Old Party private. This worries some partisans, especially in down-ballot races in the Senate, the Congress, the states, and localities.
Consider this: RNC committeeman Solomon Yue, from Oregon, told CNBC last week that he thinks “more than a majority” of members favor helping lawyers working on Trump’s four pending criminal cases, and at least three civil cases.
“I support the RNC paying President Trump’s legal bills,” Yue said.
Really? One has to wonder: Would draining the party coffers for personal purposes be more or less illegal than sending shills and impostors to convene with the presidential Electoral College? Any gambit to stick ordinary contributors with his legal bills requires the absurd presumption that criminal charges against Trump makes him a glorious martyr.
Believe that, and there may be an old Atlantic City casino for sale.
Purging the RNC staff is small potatoes compared to what Trump and his advisers would like to do with the federal civil service. The bigger goal once he returns to power is reportedly to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of government workers, possibly to fire them and replace them with loyalists. That’s one plank of his self-described “retribution” agenda.
For now the famous disorder returns to the ecosphere. Adviser Steve Bannon, whom the 45th president pardoned in a case involving a border-wall scam, suggested publicly that Trump was bought off to change his position on banning TikTok in America.
Who knows.
The ambitious Lara Trump, wife of second son Eric, doesn’t go off message like that. She justifies the idea of the RNC funding the former president's legal fees without saying if it would be legal or carried out. Republicans, she said, feel his criminal cases amount to “an attack not just on Donald Trump but on this country.”
Well, not all Republicans. But what do you expect her to say — that the U.S. is NOT all about her father-in-law?
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
