Is the RNC finally cutting Donald Trump off?
Even as Donald Trump’s toxic unpopularity and vengeful primary meddling have made the Republican Party vulnerable in the 2022 midterms, the Republican National Committee has largely stood by Trump. The RNC has even reportedly been paying some of Trump’s legal bills, with money that’s supposed to be going to Republican candidates.
That’s not a surprise, given that Trump managed to install his loyalist puppet Ronna McDaniel as RNC Chair. But now, well connected political strategist Rick Wilson says that he’s hearing McDaniel is “threatening Trump that they’ll stop paying his legal bills if he announces” that he’s running for President in 2024.
So what’s going on here? Even if Trump announces a 2024 campaign, he’s not really going to be a viable participant in the 2024 election. He’s even reportedly admitted to his advisers that he’d only be making an announcement in the delusional hope that doing so will somehow magically protect him from indictment – a notion that Attorney General Merrick Garland has emphatically shot down.
If Trump does announce a 2024 “campaign” right now, it’ll merely remind the public that the Republican Party is the party of Trump, and it’ll likely catalyze anti-Trump voters to turn out and vote for the Democrats in the midterms. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel is a stooge, but even she probably understands that Trump announcing a fictional 2024 campaign would only hurt the Republicans.
McDaniel could still cave on this. And Trump is at such a point of delusional desperation, he could still announce a phony campaign even if the RNC does cut him off in response. But it sounds like the Trump-RNC marriage may finally be on the rocks, if only because those two criminal entities no longer suit each other’s purposes. All that said, given the damage Trump is doing to the Republicans, the rest of us might be better off if he retains his hold over the RNC awhile longer.
