WaPo (“Trump takes control of the RNC with mass layoffs, restructuring“):
Former president Donald Trump took charge of the Republican National Committee this week with the political equivalent of shock and awe — leaving dozens out of work, revamping strategic priorities and raising fears among some former officials about the party’s future support for down-ballot candidates.
The senior leadership has been almost entirely replaced or reassigned, while dozens of lower-ranking officials including state directors were either fired or told to reapply for their jobs. A nationwide network of community outreach centers, once a fixture of the party’s efforts to attract minority voters, will be shuttered or refocused on get-out-the-vote efforts. The much heralded “Bank Your Vote” program, aimed at getting Republicans to vote early, will shift to a “Grow The Vote” program focused more on expanding the party’s outreach to less likely Trump voters.
Trump’s team, led by campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, is bringing in allies with what LaCivita says will be a leaner, more aggressive operation with more political experience.
“It is about changing a mind-set,” LaCivita said in an interview Tuesday. “The RNC is as much a part of the Trump campaign as the Trump campaign is part of the RNC. It is really important from our standpoint that everyone understand in a campaign that will be unprecedented in history that everyone has the same stated goal.”
The RNC’s political director, its lead data officer and communications director have all been replaced, according to people familiar with the moves. The chief of staff and top counsel voluntarily left before LaCivita took over.
One of the most experienced lawyers in GOP politics, Charlie Spies, who recently served as the architect of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s shuttered presidential effort, will take over as chief counsel.
Additionally, LaCivita is installing Christina Bobb — a former OAN reporter who has espoused false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — as senior counsel for election integrity. Bobb is the author of a book called “Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024” and promoted the audit of Arizona elections.
[…]
The new leadership at the RNC has discussed a broader effort over the coming months to challenge voter identification and signature verification rules that were put into place for the 2020 election.
“The RNC’s new posture as it relates to litigation is much more offensive and much less defensive,” LaCivita said in the interview.
Some Trump allies privately questioned the hiring of Spies, a longtime GOP lawyer who previously worked for super PACs that supported the presidential campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush in 2016.
LaCivita praised Spies as one of the party’s top campaign attorneys, who is well respected by donors for his fundraising innovations and actively involved in election litigation.
Some former Republican officials — caught off guard by the dramatic changes — have expressed concerns about the takeover, which normally happens in some form at the end of an open primary fight. Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, long a close adviser to Trump, was described as blindsided by the scale and speed of the changes, which target her efforts to balance Trump’s interest with the rest of the party’s interests.
“There won’t be a RNC operation to help the greater party. They don’t care about the greater party,” said a former RNC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect future job prospects. “The RNC is important to lots of people in down-ballot elections. They’re cutting off any service that doesn’t provide help to anyone but Donald Trump. It’s just all about Trump.”
While this had been foreshadowed for quite some time, it’s still truly and utterly bizarre. A major shakeup in 2016, when Trump first became the nominee, at least makes sense: a huge swath of the RNC staff openly despised Trump and what he stood for. But this has now been a Trump-loyal apparatus for eight years.
Beyond that, even if the only thing Trump cares about is loyalty to him and his own re-election campaign, he needs to get Republicans elected across the board to be able to implement his agenda. This will almost surely make that harder.
Axios’ Sophia Cai (“‘A harbinger of things to come’: Trump’s RNC shakeup signals plans for 2025“) sees it as a warning sign:
President Trump’s ousting of a huge chunk of the Republican National Committee’s staff is a preview of what he plans to do with federal agencies if he’s re-elected in November.
Why it matters: The Republican Party is now effectively the Trump Party. It’s been remade in a way that echoes Trump’s 2025 plan to oust moderates and nonpartisan civil servants from the government, pack federal offices with loyalists and expand presidential powers.
- Trump “clearly wants a Republican National Committee that dances to his tune, jumps when he says jump,” said Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
- “That is a harbinger of things to come,” Ornstein added. “One thing we know about Trump is that his attitude toward the federal government is clear.”
Driving the news: Trump’s new team atop the RNC — led by new party chair Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump — fired 60 staffers on Monday.
- The moves decimated the party’s data and political teams, including dozens of regional RNC staffers based in key states across the country, two people familiar with the situation told Axios.
- The RNC’s financial and digital teams are being asked to relocate to Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump spends most of his time at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the two sources said.
What they’re saying: Trump die-hards cheered the RNC firings.
- “You got the RNC that’s now purging the deep state,” conservative activist and MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk said on his podcast.
- “The RNC right now has to be taken apart brick by brick and rapidly rebuilt,” said Steve Bannon, who’d been calling for former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to step down for two years before Trump pushed her aside last month.
[…]
Zoom in: Trump has promised to gut the federal workforce by reintroducing an executive order known as Schedule F if he wins a second term.
- As Axios has reported, a consortium of Trump allies are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government if he’s elected.
- The idea would be to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents and empower Trump to wield unprecedented power.
- Trump’s plan, as outlined in his policy platform, would involve firing “rogue bureaucrats” and “corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus,” and moving up to 100,000 government positions out of D.C.
These people are delusional. Thankfully, their incompetence makes their attaining control of the government less likely.
