'Aggressive' MAGA 'loyalty tests' have left RNC without 'deep knowledge of election operations'

Lara Trump in Grapevine, Texas in June 2023 (Gage Skidmore)

Although the Republican National Committee (RNC) was very pro-Donald Trump under its former chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, Trump nonetheless viewed the organization as insufficiently MAGA. And the RNC's new leadership, including Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lana Trump (the former president's daughter-in-law), has been making a concerted effort to purge it of non-MAGA conservatives.

Politico's Sam Stein has described the firings at the RNC as a "bloodbath."

The Guardian's Hugo Lowell, in an article published on April 8, describes the problems being caused by the RNC's push to "weed out any staffers who were not fully committed to Trump and the wider MAGA movement."

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Lowell explains, "The threats of termination and the rumored loyalty tests — which turned out to be accurate when staffers were asked in job interviews if they thought the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, though there has been no evidence of election fraud — may have been too aggressive…. The situation means the RNC has been left without people with deep knowledge of election operations at the Republican Party's central committee, and who were willing to work for salaries far lower than what they could earn in the private sector."

According to Lowell, this "loss of talent" at the RNC "may be particularly notable on its "data team."

"The one bright spot for the new RNC leaders since their takeover has been Trump recording his best fundraising month of 2024, now that the former president is working with the Committee as part of a joint fundraising agreement," Lowell reports. "Trump and the RNC pulled in $65.6m in March, the party announced last week."

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Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

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