Trump’s RNC takeover triggers strife and staff exits as purge partly backfires

Donald Trump’s allies installed to run the Republican National Committee have faced a tumultuous first month in charge, buffeted by staffing problems and operational headaches as they attempt to bring the party apparatus under the control of the Trump campaign before the 2024 election.

The internal strife at the RNC has prompted the Trump campaign to privately admonish its new leaders in recent weeks. And the move to orchestrate a purge may have partly backfired with far-reaching consequences for the RNC, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.

The Trump takeover of the RNC arrived with a show of force just days after the new chair, Michael Whatley, and the new co-chair Lara Trump were elected, when emails went out to entire teams at the organization informing them they could resign and reapply for their jobs, or be terminated.

The idea was to ensure there would be no overlap between the RNC and the Trump campaign, which already had robust political and communications teams, and to weed out any staffers who were not fully committed to Trump and the wider Maga movement.

But 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.

In the weeks that followed, although the new RNC leadership quietly extended offers to a majority of former staffers, with the exception of those who worked in the RNC political department, some staffers on crucial teams declined to return, the sources said.

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.

Bringing the RNC under the wing of the Trump campaign was supposed to generate synergies. While some of those efficiencies have been realized, the sources said, the potentially overly aggressive approach may have done damage elsewhere.

A spokesperson for the RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The loss of talent may be particularly notable on the RNC’s data team – increasingly important in presidential elections – which is being relocated out of RNC headquarters in Washington and to the Trump campaign’s headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida.

The new RNC leadership recently started offering the data team staffers housing within the Trump campaign campus, described informally as “Trump Village”, hoping that defraying residential costs and logistical concerns would be an incentive for them to stay on.

For some staffers, the residential component to the job may have had the opposite effect. Some staffers who declined return offers suggested they disliked the notion of living at work, which might also mean living alongside the most hardcore Trump campaign staffers.

Separately, while senior Trump campaign advisers have always said working on a presidential campaign means relocating to where the campaign is based, the notion of moving to Florida did not enthrall some ex-RNC staffers, who pointed out they thought they were working for the GOP.

The prospect of loyalty tests also appears to have unnerved some RNC staffers who declined to return to their old jobs.

RNC staffers have long known the way to answer the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen is to say there were “irregularities”, the fact that they were being quizzed made them think the Trump campaign inherently distrusted people from the RNC, and they would always have a target on their backs.

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.

Trump and the RNC pulled in $65.6m in March, the party announced last week. The party said that Trump, the RNC and their shared accounts now had $93.1m cash on hand for April, roughly double what they had a month earlier as they narrowed the cash gap with Joe Biden’s campaign coffers.

The joint fundraising agreement has been a priority for weeks. By doing joint fundraising, Trump and the RNC can accept donations as large as $814,600. During the Republican primary, Trump had been limited to taking checks with a maximum amount of $6,600 through his campaign.