Donald Trump’s new leadership team at the Republican National Committee started the process of ousting scores of staffers on Monday night, clearing out its ranks as they prepare to bring the committee under the wing of the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, sources familiar with the matter said.
The RNC is expected to cull about 60 people across the political, data and communications departments. At least five members of the senior staff will be let go and some third-party contracts may also be cancelled. One source familiar with the situation described it as an “absolute bloodbath”.
In ousting large swathes of the RNC, the new chair, Michael Whatley, and the new co-chair, Lara Trump – the former president’s daughter-in-law – moved to reorganize the Republican party’s central committee to fall squarely behind the Trump campaign just days after they were formally elected.
The RNC is being brought under the Trump campaign to such an extent, the sources said, that the firings are mainly to ensure there is no overlap in roles between the RNC and the campaign. The Trump campaign, for instance, already has robust political and communications teams.
And, as ever with Trump’s operations, the firings are part of a strategy to ensure that only staffers committed to Trump and the Maga movement are left at the RNC as Trump tightens his grip on the party ahead of the presidential election in November.
“Chairman Whatley is in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned with his vision of how to win in November,” the new RNC chief operating officer, Sean Cairncross, wrote in emails to the political, data and communications teams that were seen by the Guardian.
“During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team,” Cairncross wrote. The email added that if staffers chose not to reapply, they would be terminated from the RNC at the end of March.
An RNC spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment. The news of the firings were first reported by Politico.
The purge at the RNC, coming days after Whatley and Lara Trump were unanimously elected on Friday as the new RNC leaders, has been widely expected for weeks inside the committee as it became increasingly apparent that Trump would force out the previous RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel.
In a speech after his election, Whatley said the RNC would “be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J Trump”, increase Republicans’ slim majority in the House and flip control of the Senate.
Both Whatley and Lara Trump were endorsed by the former president last month after Trump privately met with McDaniel at his Mar-a-Lago club and in effect suggested that she step down after Super Tuesday on 5 March, when 15 states held Republican primaries or caucuses.
At the meeting, Trump did not explicitly ask McDaniel to resign and McDaniel reiterated that she did not want to step down unless Trump asked. But the message was clear hours later when Trump sat for a pre-taped interview on Newsmax and remarked that McDaniel had to go.
McDaniel had come under intense pressure to quit over the RNC’s lackluster fundraising performance, which Trump blamed her for personally. The move to formally replace McDaniel came after Haley, Trump’s last remaining rival, exited the race after Super Tuesday to hand Trump the nomination.
The Guardian has previously reported the fundraising was becoming such an issue that top former RNC officials wanted Nikki Haley to drop out of the race weeks before she did so that it could establish a joint fundraising agreement with the Trump campaign to bolster its coffers.
