HOUSTON, Texas: Donald Trump consolidated his grip on the Republican National Committee on Friday after his daughter-in-law and another ally took top leadership posts amid a debate among members over whether the organization should help pay his legal bills.
RNC members at a meeting in Houston voted to appoint North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley and Lara Trump as chairman and co-chairman of the organization, which will play a key role in rallying voters and fundraising for the Nov. 5 general election.
This comes after Trump swept the Super Tuesday primaries, forcing Nikki Haley out of the race and leaving the former US president to run against President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
The move sees Ronna McDaniel replaced at the top of the organization. McDaniel has faced criticism over the party’s fundraising and performance at the ballot box. During her tenure, Trump was defeated in 2020 and the party performed worse than expected in the 2022 congressional elections.
Some members of the RNC have called on the RNC to help pay for Trump’s legal costs, which, along with fines, have run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Trump’s push to have the wife of his younger adult son, Eric, as second-in-command symbolizes his takeover of a political establishment whose mission is to get Republicans elected up and down the line. Not since President Ronald Reagan’s daughter Maureen Reagan was co-chair of the RNC in the 1980s has a family member of a president or candidate held such a powerful position.
One of the most pressing tasks for the new leadership will be money. After posting its lowest fundraising year in a decade in 2023, the RNC had less than $9 million in the bank at the end of January, a little more than a third of the Democratic National Committee’s $24 million, federal records show.
