By STEVE PEOPLES and MICHELLE L. PRICE (Associated Press)
HOUSTON (AP) — The Republican National Committee voted on Friday to appoint Donald Trump’s preferred leadership team, finalizing his dominance of the national party as the former president moves closer to a third consecutive presidential nomination.
Michael Whatley, a Republican from North Carolina who has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud, was chosen as the party’s new national chairman in a vote on Friday morning in Houston. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was elected as co-chair.
Trump’s team has pledged not to use the RNC to cover his increasing personal legal expenses. However, Trump and his aides will have strong control of the party’s political and fundraising operations with limited opposition from within.
“The RNC will be at the forefront of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th President of the United States,” Whatley told RNC members in a speech after his election.
Whatley will take on the top position, replacing long-serving chair Ronna McDaniel after she fell out of favor with key figures in the former president’s “Make America Great Again” movement. However, he will be surrounded by people closer to Trump.
Lara Trump is expected to primarily focus on fundraising and media appearances.
She made a point of emphasizing this shortly after being elected, using her inaugural speech as co-chair to display a $100,000 check that she said had been donated to the party that day. When later asked by a reporter, she declined to reveal who provided the check.
The effective head of the RNC will be Chris LaCivita, who will take on the committee’s chief of staff role while continuing in his position as one of the top two advisers to the Trump campaign.
McDaniel was handpicked by Trump to lead the committee seven years ago but was ousted after Trump’s MAGA movement increasingly held her responsible for losses in recent years. She hinted at this in her farewell speech on Friday, telling the members that she is most concerned about “internal cohesion” going into the election.
“We have to stop attacking other Republicans,” she said. “If we spend our time attacking each other, we ensure the Democrats are going to win.”
She also urged the party to reach out to independent and swing voters, cautioning: “We won’t win if we only communicate with each other.”
While McDaniel received a standing ovation after her farewell, the new leadership wholeheartedly embraced the change, and Lara Trump, accompanied by her husband, Eric Trump, was greeted like a celebrity, with members queuing up to take photos with her.
With Trump’s approval, LaCivita is pledging to implement extensive changes and personnel decisions at every level of the RNC to ensure it operates seamlessly as an extension of the Trump campaign.
In an interview on Thursday, LaCivita tried to allay concerns from some RNC members that the already financially strained committee would assist in covering Trump’s legal expenses. Trump is facing four criminal charges and a total of 91 counts, as well as a $355 million civil fraud judgment, which he is appealing. His associated Save America political action committee spent $76 million on attorneys in the last two years.
LaCivita said that people speculating about the RNC paying for legal bills are simply trying to harm donors, and instead, Trump’s legal fees are mostly covered by Save America, a separate political entity.
He stated that neither the RNC’s nor the campaign’s money has been or will be used to pay legal fees.
The RNC was covering some of Trump’s legal expenses for New York cases that began during his presidency, as reported by The Washington Post. The Washington Post reported.However, in November 2022, RNC Chair McDaniel announced that the RNC would cease payments once Trump rejoined the 2024 presidential race.
When Trump announced his intention to replace the party’s leadership, it raised further questions about whether the committee would cover his bills. These questions grew more intense following Lara Trump's recent statement. said last month She mentioned that she was not familiar with the party’s rules regarding paying her father-in-law’s legal fees, but believed the idea would receive widespread support among Republican voters.
Given such conflicting messages, some RNC members remain doubtful.
Republican committeeman Henry Barbour, from Mississippi, suggested a non-binding resolution explicitly stating that RNC funds could not be used for Trump’s legal expenses, which ultimately failed to gain enough support from RNC members. proposed a non-binding resolution explicitly stating that RNC funds could not be used for Trump’s legal bills. Yet the resolution died when Barbour failed to earn the support of RNC members from at least 10 states.
Republican committeeman John Hammond from Indiana expressed that people he spoke with on the committee all agree that donor money should be focused on winning elections, not legal fees, and he believes the committee would appreciate more assurance and clarification on this issue.
The new leadership team is expected to further embrace Trump’s emphasis on voter fraud and his unproven claims about the election he lost to President Joe Biden, despite multiple court cases and Trump’s own Justice Department failing to find significant voting irregularities.
Whatley, an attorney, mostly avoided using Trump’s description of Biden’s victory and stated in a 2021 interview that Biden was legitimately elected and won the majority of the electoral college votes. However, he also asserted in another interview shortly after the 2020 election that there was “massive fraud,” and has prioritized focusing on “election integrity” for his state party since then. said in one 2021 interview But he stated in another interview in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was “massive fraud.” He has also made focusing on “election integrity” a top priority for his state party in the years since.
Lara Trump, in a letter announcing her candidacy for co-chair, informed committee members of her plans to concentrate on battleground states, increasing voter turnout in close races, reviewing the RNC’s finances, including all contracts and agreements, and reducing spending that does not directly contribute to winning elections.
She emphasized the importance of working to ensure the security of the election, a key focus for her father-in-law.
During her speech on Friday, Lara Trump stated: “I’m ready to get to work.”
“The goal on Nov. 5 is to win, as my father-in-law says, ‘bigly,’” she said.
Trump’s GOP takeover is, in some ways, a typical transition for major political parties moving from the primary to the general election phase of presidential elections. Typically, candidates are given control of their national parties once they secure the presidential nomination. For instance, Biden effectively controls the Democratic National Committee.
However, some people are concerned in private that Trump is causing unnecessary drama and distraction for the party.
McDaniel is set to be replaced on Friday after Trump pushed her to resign. She was Trump’s chosen candidate in 2017, and he supported her reelection every two years, up to last year.
However, McDaniel has increasingly angered MAGA leaders, who held her responsible for Republican losses in recent years. Other Republicans have blamed Trump, who remains widely unpopular with Americans and particularly vulnerable with suburban and college-educated voters. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults expressed dissatisfaction with the prospect of Trump being nominated for president, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll released in December.
