Meanwhile, Donald Trump is supporting two other loyal allies for the top RNC post. The first will be chaired by Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party and an ardent denier of the 2020 election. Chris Lacivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, will serve as chief operating officer. According to CBS News, Rachivita will continue in his role with the Trump campaign.
These positions are not exactly appointments. The chair and co-chair must be elected by her RNC committee members. But they should be shot, given President Trump’s stranglehold on all other Republican affiliates up to the US House of Representatives.
Trump’s critics blame Republicans for these choices. They argue that the former president’s selection is just another sign that the party is a subsidiary of the Trump Company, and that he is trying to run it like an incompetently run family business. The plan allegedly extorts money from Republican donors to pay off Trump’s mounting legal costs and subordinates the party’s national interests to Trump’s.
God, let’s hope so.
Mr. Trump already runs his businesses and charities to the hilt, sometimes operating outside the confines of the law. You may remember bankruptcy. Unpaid bills. Fraud against banks and insurance companies. Appointments of unqualified family members who similarly turned out to be allergic to the truth. Convictions of staff and lawyers. Trump himself has admitted to misappropriating funds for personal purposes, so there are legal restrictions on his ability to serve on the boards of charities.
Trump came to office on a promise to run government like a business, and as president he took those very kleptocratic, nepotistic business instincts and applied them to the executive branch. Executed.
He succeeded in siphoning money from taxpayers by allowing the Secret Service to rent Trump-owned properties at exorbitant prices. In addition to government officials from Saudi Arabia, China, and Turkey, there were also U.S. business lobbyists and Republican bigwigs hoping for favorable government treatment. Surprisingly, after he left office and sold the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., it became less popular as a venue for political events.
President Trump’s family relationships also worked out well in this arrangement. For example, President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner led the administration’s Middle East policy and secured a $2 billion investment from a fund headed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed, known as MBS, shortly after he left office. When asked this week about the investment and the U.S. intelligence report that found the crown prince murdered Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, Kushner angrily replied: “Are you really still doing this?”
Meanwhile, MBS recently vowed to maintain his investment in Kushner’s private equity fund if Trump is re-elected.
I dredged this up in part because right-wing media tried to dredge up memories, but it would be more fun to talk about Hunter Biden’s shady art sales. But it’s also a useful preview of what the Trump family’s leadership of the RNC will look like. President Trump’s “grievances first, government last” management style, which may have had disastrous consequences for democracy when his people were running the White House, has been applied to destroying the Republican Party. It could become something great.
For example, Lara Trump recently told Newsmax that if she were elected co-chair of the RNC, she would make sure to use “every penny” of RNC funds to return her father-in-law to the White House. This makes down-ballot candidates nervous, and they too may need a few pennies here and there. But if past is prologue, they may be able to extort RNC funds for their own events — whether those events are at Mar-a-Lago or by funneling donations into party leaders’ bank accounts. Assuming it will be held at a different venue.
Either way, the RNC is in its worst financial position in at least a decade. With the Trump family in charge, all available funds will be diverted where it is most advantageous (politically, legally, financially) to the father’s family, rather than to the race where they would be best utilized. There is a high possibility that
good. For the Grand Old Party to snap out of its Trump trance, they need to bankrupt the RNC and make it as poorly run as possible.
None of this means that the party’s incompetent managers will destroy President Trump in November. This is a person who is good at failing upwards. But win or lose, Trump will continue to laugh all the way to the bank.