Donald Trump's inner circle is scrambling to put down a plot hatched by far-right "America First" conservatives that would allow delegates at the upcoming Republican Party nominating convention in Milwaukee that would absolve them of the pledge to select the former president as the GOP's 2024 presidential candidate.
According to a report from the Washington Post, those plans weren't just pipedreams and a presentation was made in battleground Arizona that has alarmed the Trump camp once they were informed.
As the Post's Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Isaac Arnsdorf, "Part of the presentation included a secret plan to throw the party’s nomination of Donald Trump for president into chaos," adding that attendees at the meeting acknowledged, "... the gambit would require support from several other state delegations, and it wasn’t clear whether those allies had been lined up. One idea, discussed as attendees ate finger-foods, was for co-conspirators to signal their allegiance to one another by wearing matching black jackets."
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The very idea that there could be a delegate revolt for what was expected to be a coronation for the otherwise embattled Trump left "left some delegates puzzled and alarmed," and raised warning flags for the Trump campaign.
"Whatever the goal, the Trump campaign rushed to head off the stunt and replace the delegates. One campaign staffer involved in the cleanup described it to at least two Republicans as an 'existential threat' to Trump’s nomination next month, two people familiar with conversations told The Post," with the report adding Trump insiders don't believe it was a one-off and that there may be more trouble brewing.
"The fracas exposed the challenges of choreographing next month’s convention in Milwaukee, where some 5,000 delegates and alternates will participate — many of them inclined toward the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that animate many of Trump’s supporters," the report added with one Arizona delegate who took part in the plotting admitting, “See this is what happens in a war between Good and Evil. We’re never going to get along and hold hands and sing kumbaya, that’s just not how it works.”
The power struggle among Republican insiders as the election approaches led one state GOP to throw up his hands and quit.
In a statement, former Illinois Republican Party Chairman Don Tracy, wrote, "I have had to spend far too much time dealing with intra party power struggles, and local intra party animosities. We have Republicans who would rather fight other Republicans than engage in the harder work of defeating incumbent Democrats by convincing swing voters to vote Republican.”
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