The Republican National Committee voted Donald Trump friends, including his daughter-in-law, to key leadership positions on Friday, strengthening the former president’s grip on the party ahead of the November election.
Trump, 77, the expected Republican presidential nominee, announced last month a slate of hand-picked candidates to lead the RNC, which raises finances for Republican candidates and distributes electoral funds.
Michael Whatley, the Republican Party’s leader in North Carolina, and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump were chosen RNC chair and co-chair, respectively, by voice vote, at a gathering of the 168 RNC members in Houston.
Both were unopposed.
“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States,” Whatley said in his acceptance speech.
“We will work relentlessly in every state to ensure that it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Lara Trump, who is married to the former president’s middle son Eric, said the party has “one goal” on election day.
“The goal on November 5 is to win, as my father-in-law says, ‘bigly,’” she said. “This isn’t just about right versus left, Republican versus Democrat. It’s about good versus evil.”
The former president endorsed another ally, campaign strategist Chris LaCivita, to be the chief operating officer of the RNC.
“This group of three is highly talented, battle-tested, and smart,” Trump said in a statement.
He described his daughter-in-law as “an extremely talented communicator” who is “dedicated to all that MAGA stands for,” a reference to his “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Focus on defeating Biden
Lara Trump has stated that paying her father-in-law’s legal fees is of “big interest” to Republican voters, in addition to ensuring that party funds are awarded to his presidential campaign.
Trump has been facing growing legal fees as a result of the multiple criminal and civil cases launched against him, and he has been using donations to his Save America political action committee to pay them off.
In choosing Whatley, Trump stated that he is “committed to election integrity, which we must have to keep fraud out of our election so it can’t be stolen.”
Whatley, the RNC’s general counsel, has openly supported Trump’s false assertions that there was “massive fraud” in the 2020 presidential election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden, Trump’s likely November opponent.
Amy Carnevale, head of the Massachusetts Republican Party, told AFP that the election of new RNC leadership “marks the shift from the primary campaign to the general election.”
“Starting today, the focus of the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party more generally will really be on defeating Joe Biden,” Carnevale said in a statement.
Whatley succeeds Ronna McDaniel as RNC chief.
McDaniel, the niece of Utah Senator Mitt Romney, was appointed by Trump to lead the body in 2016, but their relationship deteriorated after a run of Republican electoral losses and poor fundraising results.
Lara Trump, a 41-year-old former television producer, married Eric Trump in 2014 and actively participated in her father-in-law’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
She has expressed political ambitions of her own. She briefly pondered competing for a US Senate seat in her native state of North Carolina in 2021, but decided against it.
Trump surrounded himself with family members in his real estate company, the Trump Organization, and named relatives to high-level jobs in the White House.
During his administration, he had prominent advisors including his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner.