Trump Gives RNC Chair Unwanted Kiss Of Death, Probably Won't Get Sued For This One
Has there been a decline in the quality and quantity of her toadying?
Poor Ronna Romney McDaniel has spent the last few years absolutely abasing herself for old Donald “Bronzer Butt” Trump. And we do mean abasing herself.
She stopped using her maiden name because Trump doesn’t like her Uncle Mitt. She went full-on babbling nativist “the Messican cartels are coming to kill your children with rainbow-colored fentanyl” in public, where people could hear the words she said. As head of the Republican National Committee since 2017, she has made it clear that the GOP stands firmly behind Bronzer Butt during all his perils and tribulations: his attempted coup, his impeachment, his second impeachment, his criminal trials, his civil trials, his being a huge reason the party has gotten hammered in elections at all levels of government … we could go on, but the Internet only has but so much space.
Of course she did all this presumably knowing what everyone else on the planet has figured out by now, which is that Trump has all the loyalty of a sewer weasel. So she could not possibly have been surprised this weekend when he used a TV interview to toss her under the bus like she was one of his wives or something.
Trump did the tossing during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. Bartiromo was grilling him a bit on the anemic fundraising numbers that the RNC has put up this election cycle. How anemic? The committee entered 2023 with all of $8 million cash on hand, which The Washington Post reports makes the past year the worst year for RNC fundraising, adjusting for inflation, since 1993.
TRUMP: I have nothing to do with the RNC.
BARTIROMO: How’s Ronna McDaniel doing?
TRUMP: Uh, I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me. I think she did okay initially in the RNC. I would say right now there will probably be some changes made.
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
Round and round,
Crushing Ronna McDaniel like a grape,
Round and round…
This is a mere year after McDaniel won a fourth term as chair with a pretty convincing victory. And she reportedly remains popular with members of the RNC. (Though as we noted at the time, her prize for winning was that she gets to spend the next two years trying to keep all the stormtroopers goose-stepping in the same direction.)
McDaniel remains, however, very unpopular with the MAGA wing of the party. There has reportedly been some grumbling about trying to replace her, with Trump himself privately questioning her job performance. Sure, she’s given him seven years of obsequiousness so thick that it would embarrass Waylon Smithers. But part of her job is to navigate between different GOP factions, so she’s not going to go full MAGA lunatic on the level of, say, Stephen Miller. And that upsets MAGA, which has the collective self-awareness of lint.
Now in fairness, fundraising is generally the main job of an RNC chair. (Well, that and lying.) So sucking at it would seem to rate a lower score on your annual job review.
On the other hand, the party establishment is pretty fractured at the moment over Trump’s nomination, despite his winning Iowa and New Hampshire convincingly. As a member from Rhode Island told CNN, “Once Trump becomes the nominee, there are a whole bunch of people who used to give to the party who will say, ‘I’m not giving to the party.’”
In other words, Trump isn’t exactly helping McDaniel out by being a real drag on fundraising himself. And that’s no surprise. At least some members of the GOP have noticed that the party has been on a hell of a losing streak when he’s on the ballot, and it’s mostly the vagaries of our ridiculous democracy with its endless opportunities for gerrymandering and court-stealing that have allowed them to keep a grip on power.
Donors may also be concerned that RNC donations will get steered to Trump’s terrible lawyers. And why not? Two Trump PACs reportedly spent over $55 million-with-an-M on the former president’s legal fees over the last year. Well, you can’t expect Trump to be the one to pay people for defending him over all the stuff he did.
There was a time when Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle reportedly wanted to take over the RNC. Could they replace McDaniel in the near future? Yr Wonkette encourages this, for comedy.
[Joe.My.God / Washington Post / CNN]
Your donations to Wonkette won’t go to Trump or the RNC, that’s the Wonkette guarantee.
What is fascinating to me is how many people are willing to get on the Trump bus after seeing it run over pretty much everyone who has ever got on it.
Now now. Don't be too hard on Waylon Smithers. He's been known to work against Mr. Burns because "his ultra-conservative views conflict with my... choice of lifestyles."
Incidentally, I used to be part of the gay employees group at an employer that wasn't especially noted for being a hotbed of liberal social views. Smithers was our unofficial mascot.