Customary RNC Chair calls out Republicans for flocking to the ‘love temple of Donald Trump’

Well it appears Donald Trump wants to remake the Republican National Committee In His Image two sources tell NBC News Rona McDaniel could leave her role as RNC chair after the South Carolina primary in just two weeks and team Trump has already signaled who he wants to replace McDaniel Michael Watley the chair of the North Carolina Republican.

Party and an election denier new reporting in the New York Times this morning reads quote Watley has gained favor with Trump by embracing his stop the steel Mantra H joining us now former Montana Governor Mark raso he is an old friend of mine he served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2002 to 2003 Governor it is so good to.

Have you on Welcome to the table um so you know Governor we um we often it's Mo Sanders towns and we often only have one chairman uh at the table today we have two chairman I I just have to ask what where were you and what did you think when you saw this news about Ron McDaniel and frankly earlier in the week the chief of staff stepping down like.

What do you what do you think well first of all can I say hello to Michael it's a delight Michael to see you this morning and miss you i' to be very honest um you know the fact of the matter is I don't know how to discern what Donald Trump thinks and doesn't think on any given day and as a consequence I'm a little bit hesitant.

About exceeding the boundaries of propriety but but at the same time I also know that um it's a Cutthroat business with he and that gang that is a part of his Enterprise and a part of his business and a part of his campaign and so my guess would be that there's some area performance that R did not quite measure up to and that I would guess.

Would be and this is only a guess is that one the DNC has been outraising um the RNC by substantial measure and secondly of course Donald Trump needs a lot of that money to pay for all of his legal expenses um it always seemed a bit of a of an unusual circumstance where um he solicits from all these good people across the country and then of course.

Uses it to pay his own legal expenses um but um in addition to that um I haven't seen Ronald really waver or move away from defense of the Trump Mantra but but um hard to guess and be accurate that those would be the two areas of suspicion that I would have go can you help me understand materially what this means for the Republican party to to.

Bring the actual apparatus of the party even closer into the Trump sphere especially when you're talking about some some reported names being floated as as R's replacement being election deniers themselves well frankly um when you have the um presidential office um also engaged um and the president is a member.

Of your party it's literally controlled by the president and his staff and um there's a lot of discretionary decision making but it has largely to do with Logistics in terms of um philosophy and articulation of campaign tactics and those kinds of things if the president is of your party you're going to be engaged but you're not going to dictate.

Those things if the reverse is true and the president is not of your party then the RNC chair has a great deal more discretion and authority and more Reliance upon its members but the way that virtually everyone in the party has flocked um to a worship at the Temple of Donald Trump um indicates to me that there's something remarkably different.

Today than what I experienced and I would guess what Michael experienced as well it was not near as clandestine it was not near as involved in ctitious strategy it was not nearly as involved in in extremism politics it was uh just remarkably different it all began to change in about 2008 and it's only degraded itself further to this very.

Moment in time Governor there there are two aspects of this uh that I find to be daming uh of this particular iteration of the Republican National Committee from your service uh and from my service you have reporting out the uh the Guardians Hugo Al L noting the issue for the RNC has been the lack of direct revenues with.

Small dollar donors seem to generally prefer to donate directly to the Trump campaign and larger institutional donors who dislike Trump preferring to donate directly to Challengers like Nikki Haley so that's problem one where you have this B for ation of of the money uh which again as you know makes it very hard to to do the kind of fundraising.

That the RC needs to do which is why they're sitting with $8 million in the bank at the end of the year the second piece though which is uh equally damning if not more so is that the guardian is also reporting Republican National Committee wants Nikki Haley to drop out to boost funds so you see this this thing where the party is not just you.

Know uh in a bad position financially but then putting its finger on the scale to try to push a candidate out because they favor another candidate we know the rules inside the organization rule 11 letter from the states uh saying that this is our candidate that they're not going through the process they're just saying we want the cash we don't want.

This particular candidate how does what does this tell you about where this party goes next beyond what happens in this election cycle as it's setting a new floor for itself well Michael I'm not altogether certain that this party can be resurrected and can be reconstituted in a way that um reflects its proud history in years.

Before because of the dependence upon the incredibly selfish um and exclusively focused efforts that are cruel angry bitter um and as the consequence of that reflecting of course the personality of Donald Trump and the people that are around him believe that these autocratic methods ultimately will gain them success and frankly with what.

He's announced in reference to what it is that he intends to do everything from suspending the Constitution or terminating I think was his word um to perhaps of taking the Department of Justice and assigning in the duties of Stormtroopers trying to make certain that people who are as enemies are going to be held in the crosshairs this is an.

Incredibly dangerous moment in the history of this this uh United States of America and the autocratic Tendencies of this fellow and of those who follow him the desire for power constant and unrelentless is just something that I think um has to be communicated to the American people in a way that they clearly understand and this grouping.

This attraction to this kind of Venom from a wide swath of people who speak um I think or recognize that Donald Trump is speaking to them in a way that appeals to the worst side of their nature is something that runs contrary to our constitution so at the end of the day I mean our constitution is based upon optimism and and values honesty.

Integrity and focused upon what's fair and belief in each other and Trust in each other he destroys all of that and sets about to do it every single day and to Cobble together just a slight plurality that would allow him to secure enough electoral votes to once again enter the office you know I hear people say well I like this policy I don't.

Think he had a policy I don't think he has enough intellectual curiosity to be interested in a policy uh this is more about power every single day and it is a crisis and that's why the supreme court hearing yesterday it's a part of why it was so critical and why it was a little bit disappointing frankly in my judgment when we talk about all these things that.

They were hypothesizing about and ruminating about that's not really their job their job is to be a judge in article three it says you're to judge the case in front of you and to do it on the basis of the Constitution and we have all these originalists on the court who believe that the constitution says what it means and means what it says and.

They're are postulating about what might take place in Alaska uh or some other state that's not the case before you the case before you is Colorado so decide that case do the first right thing and everything else will unfold as it should thereafter is this going to be messy it's going to be messy regardless of which way the court goes but at the end.

Of the day if you have a clean call and and I'm I'm just overwhelmingly impressed by the respondents um support of their cause and if you have a clean call we can work with everything else we did it through the pandemic we've done it through all of this morass of insurrection that was instigated precipitated excited and encouraged by.

Donald Trump so we can make it through all right we need more Governors like and more Republicans like the governor right here and you as I I enjoyed my time working with Governor Rosco he's just he you see why he's a special man Governor Mark Roso thank you so much for being uh on the weekend with us really appreciate.

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