trump's Hostile Takeover of the GOP

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Considering how much Republicans love the idea of running government - and apparently political parties - like a business, of course there was a hostile takeover of the Republican Party itself. donald trump effectively hijacked the organization in toto this week by ousting RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel because she wasn't giving him all the power (and money) he wanted (via Lara Priluck at Politico):

Trump has been increasingly public about his mounting discontent with the committee and with McDaniel in particular.

But it wasn’t always this way. McDaniel, who is the niece of retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), first captured Trump’s attention when she held the role of chair of the Michigan Republican Party in 2016. Trump rewarded McDaniel after his historic win in the state by installing her as RNC chair...

Most of Priluck's article covers how often McDaniel as RNC chair would rise to trump's defense as various scandals arose. It especially points out how McDaniel teamed up with trump's handlers to throw out the legal results of the 2020 elections:

McDaniel was also one of the many Republicans called to testify before the Jan. 6 select committee.

Her deposition footage revealed that — after the 2020 election — Trump connected her with John Eastman. Eastman is the architect of the fringe legal theory that the vice president had the power to swap official electors with ones who supported Trump during the certification process.

“He turned the call over to John Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states,” McDaniel said in the deposition video.

She then confirmed the RNC helped the Trump campaign assemble “contingent” electors...

Yet even with all that legal help to commit a serious act of illegality, trump came to blame the RNC - and thus McDaniel - for failing to help him get the courts into accepting his baseless claims of "stolen" ballots. After all, trump can't blame himself for not having any evidence behind his Big Lie.

It hasn't helped McDaniel's case that the Republican Party has been struggling since 2016 to pull off any major electoral gains. Even the major victory of flipping the US House to the GOP in 2022 wasn't enough because it left them with a disorganized and fractious House unable to do anything except grandstand on Fox Not-News.

It's been clear to a number of observers that the power struggle between the Establishment faction of the Republicans and the invasive trumpian force were coming to a head. This is the most public sign that trump decisively won that battle. It wasn't enough that trump held the power with the GOP voting base: trump wanted control of every possible decision-making role in the party so he can effectively raid it like a vulture capitalist, strip it for parts, keep the good stuff for himself, and abandon the husk when he moves on.

They're not even hiding it. trump is putting in control of the RNC a family member - Lara Trump, Eric's wife - whose only skill set is mangling Tom Petty songs. And Lara's making it clear that her father-in-law is after every penny in the GOP he can take (via Gabriella Ferrigine at Salon):

Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump and the daughter-in-law of former president Donald Trump, promised on Tuesday that she would use "every single penny" of Republican National Committee (RNC) funds to see Trump back in the White House if she becomes co-chair of the party.

During a recent appearance on the conservative network Newsmax, Trump claimed that “the RNC needs to be the leanest, most lethal political fighting machine we’ve ever seen in American history..." 

"No one tell her the RNC is supposed to be in charge of assisting the entire party at the federal, state and local level. Not just Trump’s personal slush fund," quipped attorney Bradley Moss on X/Twitter. 

Republican strategist Bobby Trivett, a self-acknowledged Nikki Haley supporter argued that Lara Trump has "no interest in Republican Victory up and down the ballot, she just wants Trump legal fees paid."

Former Department of Defense official Mike Walker seemed to posit that Lara Trump's claim of financial support for MAGA might not be politically aligned with other conservatives, tweeting that her assertion will likely come as a "surprise GOP candidates for the House and Senate and other offices..."

While individual candidates and state-level organizations of the GOP can make their own fundraising, they need the foundational support of the national party to ensure they keep their budgets in the black. The way Lara's talking about it - and how the other campaign experts are interpreting it - is that trump will ensure the RNC won't pay out, it'll vacuum up.

And as Trivett noted, a lot of evidence is out there that trump has been using his own campaign funds to pay for all of the expensive legal bills and court cases he's endured over the last three years. With a massive civil case ruling just last month over his sexual assault and defaming of Carroll costing him $88 million - and with the expected NY civil case ruling this Friday over his business and tax frauds costing him $250 million at the least - trump is going to vacuum up all the money he can get his hand on as soon as possible.

For all of trump's talk about being a big billionaire, the truth is that on his person he barely has any wealth at all. Most of a billionaire's wealth is on paper: That is, the expected value of various properties, corporations, investments, and financial papers they have on them at any given time. Elon Musk for example may be the richest man on the planet, but most of that wealth is tied up in stock holdings and investments he can't easily liquidate to put more money in his pocket right at this moment.

And in trump's case, a lot of that wealth was a lie (hence the New York civil case). trump doesn't have that much money for real.

For trump to pay off - or place in escrow for the courts while he fights his appeals - that much money would require him to either sell off a number of his properties and financial holdings - which weakens his overall claim to power and cuts into future grifting and emolument schemes - or gain access to on-hand cash, which is where the campaign donations come in. Knowing trump, he'll steal other people's money first before using his own.

Most of the other deep-pocket fundraisers for the Republican Party are the same way. Their wealth is mostly on paper as well, which was one of the reasons why the GOP across the board has been struggling with campaign fundraising the last year or so as those deep pockets are evaluating the Return On Investments their money isn't achieving. While the SuperPACs are still out there, how many of them are going to share their money with an RNC organization that's not going to help with the costs of campaigning - the ads, the office staffing, the signs, the rallies, the snacks - heading into 2024?

This is going to get messy as trump and his lackeys clean out the Republican Party vault to pay off his debts (and whatever indulgences trump still enjoys).

This is what running a business looks like, Republicans, if the aim is to crash and burn everything and move on to the next victim. Congratulations, GOP, you're now Sears.