You can't make this stuff up. The Trump family takeover of the Republican National Committee is nearly complete. After the reins were officially handed over to former North Carolina GOP chair Michael Watley and current Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump, nearly sixty party leaders across the country were either pushed out outright or asked to resign and re-apply for their position. These positions aren't necessarily all at the top. Many involve those operating as a "liason" level between the national party and state parties. Of course, many state GOP organizations are equally scrambled as the national committee, both in terms of leadership and funds on hand. Further severing lines of communication between the national party as it becomes increasingly inward / Trump focused and state organizations which would typically focus on get out the vote efforts sounds like a REALLY bad strategy.
One GOP leader from Vermont, Paul Dame, appeared on MSNBC to describe his take on the change in leadership and what it means for the RNC financially and politically. He was one of several state GOP leaders who had attempted to get an agreement in writing with the Trump campaign that RNC funds would NOT be used for legal fees for Trump but found that consideration of the proposal was tabled via procedural maneuvers when an insufficient number of states had joined a meeting where the issue was raised. (Convenient, huh?) Subsequent to that meeting, Dame said he spoke personally with Lara Trump and was given assurances her stance was unchanged, meaning no attempt to use RNC funds for legal fees would be made. He voted FOR the new leaders in their internal meeting on March 8 and, as he put it,
(I) left thinking, alright, I'm gonna give these folks the benefit of the doubt and the first business day after that, there were major changes at the RNC, and it's really affecting people closest to the ground. A lot of the regional political directors and state directors were being affected by this and that's the people that state party people like mine interact with on a regular basis so it's kind of created some uncertainty about what's going to be happening at the RNC moving forward and what (sic) the state organizations will interact with the national organization.
He was then asked this blunt question (paraphrased):
You said you were in Houston Friday and VOTED for Lara Trump, you said you wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but did you really think putting someone like Lara Trump in a position like that, being a daughter-in-law of Donald Trump, did you really think that was going to be the best idea?
He answered saying he had "very frank and direct" conversations with both Lara Trump and Michael Watley before the vote on this issue and was given assurances from both that using RNC funds for legal purposes was out the window.
I'll leave it to the reader to parse that sentence CAREFULLY and resist interpreting it more than the one way Dame likely meant. He of course meant use of RNC funds for "legal counsel expenses" was supposedly out the window. Not that the idea that use of RNC funds for any actually legal purposes was out of the window.
How naive are these remaining Republican Party operatives still clinging to the idea of a GOP apparatus not completely slimed to the core by the corruption of Trump? Well, one way to guage the self-delusion is to actually hear the speeches being made in support of surrendering the party to the Trump syndicate. In that Houston meeting of the Republican Party leadership, the woman - only identified as RNC member Beth Bloch - who spoke prior to Lara Trump's installment actually said this:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/rncs-endorsement-lara-trump-co-211357254.htmlIn a world where qualifications are often measured by titles and years of experience, we are reminded of a powerful truth: God does not call the qualified; he qualifies the called,” she said. “Lara Trump is the embodiment of this truth.
Keep in mind these words are being spoken about a man and his family facing $455 million in legal fines for civil fraud charges and another $93 million in civil defamation penalties and has over $1 billion in mortgages coming due in the next five years or so and has had NUMEROUS companies file for bankruptcy, stiffing thousands of creditors and contractors.
When will they learn?
Well, according to Paul Dame, this current leadership crew is only filling out the term left vacated by the resignation of Rona McDaniel. The leadership positions will open up in January 2025 after the election results from 2024 are in and they'll have a chance to change direction if needed then.
Maybe. Maybe not.
WTH
