It would be so easy to say that all America’s political problems are caused by Señor Trumpanzee. But that would be absolutely not the case. Closer: all America’s political problems are caused by the 74,223,975 people who voted for Señor Trumpanzee, his cult followers. It’s like blaming World War II and the Holocaust on Hitler, instead of the millions of Germans who brought him to power and supported him. The Republican Party has been a mess for way longer than I’ve been alive but it’s been getting worse and worse and now it’s little more than a Trump cult or, as David Graham put it yesterday another subsidiary of Trump Inc., like Trump University, Trump steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, Trump Magazine, Trump: The Game, Tour de Trump, the New Jersey Generals, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Casinos, Trump Entertainment Resorts… So when will the the MAGA-GOP be seeking bankruptcy protection?
Graham’s point is that we’re watching the beginning of the end of the GOP unfolding right now. “Something called the Republican Party,” he wrote, “will surely exist for years to come, like a legacy brand subsumed by a competitor, but it appears to be coming to its end as a functional party. Yeah, but the Whigs have disappeared, haven’t they? They elected 4 especially shitty conservative presidents— William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore. Before the party disappeared, prominent politicians like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams and William Seward were members. When Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress, it was as a Whig. They were also the majority party in the Senate from 1841-1845 and the majority party in the House in 1841 and again in 1847.
Yesterday, Trump announced his effective takeover of the Republican National Committee, endorsing Michael Whatley, the chair of the North Carolina GOP, as chair; his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair; and one of his top campaign advisers, Chris LaCivita, as chief operating officer. LaCivita will reportedly also remain with the Trump presidential campaign, splitting time. The current chair of the party, Ronna McDaniel, is stepping down because of pressure from Trump.
Officially, these are only recommendations, but they seem nearly certain to become reality. Trump has long held de facto sway over the Republican National Committee, but these moves give him de jure control, too. The reorganization is especially striking because it comes in the midst of what is a moderately competitive presidential primary between Trump and Nikki Haley. Although no one really thinks Haley has much chance at beating Trump, he’s now asserting control over the body that oversees that primary, like a basketball coach appointing one of his assistant coaches as referee.
Trump’s approach is familiar from the way he ran his family business, the Trump Organization, and his White House. He stocks them with ultra-loyalists who will take hits for him and with family members who are questionably qualified. The effect is to efface any organizational identity or institutional structures, to ensure that the only thing that matters, and the only person who decides, is Trump.
The Trump Organization, unusually for a company of its size, was run with a small staff— a few longtime lieutenants, such as Allen Weisselberg, its longtime CFO, and now-estranged fixer Michael Cohen, and then Trump’s children Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka. This generation of Trumps has shown no particular genius for real-estate development; two of them were reportedly nearly charged with felonies after the collapse of one high-profile project. When Trump won the presidency, he nominally placed Eric in charge, but revealed his faith in his son’s abilities by continuing to be highly involved.
…Whatley is a veteran party official, serving as general counsel, but his major selling point in Trump’s eyes is that he is a loyalist and faithfully backed Trump’s bogus claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Lara Trump has been a frequent surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail and television, but she has no experience at the RNC.
Signs of the GOP’s terminal illness have been present for years. Trump began what amounted to a hostile takeover in 2016, breezing through the Republican primary despite the opposition of most of the party establishment, in a demonstration of the weakness of party structures.
Long before he decided to depose her, McDaniel was his own pick for chair. Presidents always exercise great influence over their party committees, but the GOP was particularly supine. In 2020, the RNC didn’t even bother with one of the most fundamental roles of a political party— putting forth a platform. Instead, it resolved “that the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” Opposition to Trump within Congress and in state parties has also been slowly suffocated.
The full conquest of the RNC is good news for Trump personally. He can take advantage of the party’s resources, such as they still exist, and make it do what he wants, without the pesky problems of existing structures. But given what we know about the Trump Organization and the Trump White House, it is unlikely to be good news for the party.
In Manhattan this week, a judge is expected to rule in a civil fraud trial that could fine Trump hundreds of millions of dollars, cancel the Trump Organization’s license to operate in New York State, and strip it of marquee properties. Weisselberg is reportedly in talks to plead guilty to perjury in the case, atop a prior felony guilty plea. The Trump administration was, if anything, worse run. It was four years of constant chaos, punctuated by two separate impeachments and concluding with an attempt to steal a presidential election. (Trump is in court over that, too.) None of this is a good omen for the RNC’s future as a Trump subsidiary.
Yesterday, Nikki Haley suggested that Trump is trying to steal the nomination with this new crew of sycophants at the RNC. Speaking at a campaign event in Bamberg, South Carolina, she said “Think about what’s happening right now. Is that how you’re going to try and take an election?” She said much the same on Fox News: “Now you go and you look at what he did with the RNC yesterday… he’s going and changing out leadership, so that it’s somebody that he prefers and his daughter-in-law to co-chair? He’s putting his campaign manager as the director? Are we gonna let him just take over the party that’s gonna control the convention, too? At what point do we not see the problem? We don’t have kings in this country.” A Trump spokesperson responded, “Nikki Braindead Birdbrain Haley reeks of desperation as it’s clear she knows she has no shot, and is now auditioning for a cable news contract when her 15 minutes are over. But not before she can squeeze every last dollar out of her Democrat benefactors.”