The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome! Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together. Thank you for joining us for the Pro America Report. Please visit proAmericareport.com and sign up there for the substack that I write getting a ton of attention from. My substack on Ben Carson, Doctor Ben Carson, ‘course I, that was last week when I sent that and I sent it after I had had a segment on the radio show on Ben Carson and my assertion was that Ben Carson is the best pick for Vice president for Donald Trump. And over the weekend Donald Trump made some comments on other candidates. I think, he said. Senator Scott, and maybe who else? So Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, those are all because he’s playing politics. He knows those are the people that are popular. He knows that Senator Scott is from South Carolina. Kristi Noem is very popular with the the conservatives, but those are not real candidates they will not be the vice presidential candidate. Trust me.
Anyway, got a great ton of attention go to phyllisschlafly.com also and sign up for the daily e-mail. The daily WYNK. What you need to know. Comes out every morning at 8:00 AM East Coast Time, 5:00 AM Pacific, and the very helpful for you to get that from me and it will give you Monday through Friday each morning each weekday morning. It’ll. Give you a couple of stories. Couple of links and one clear WYNK – what you need to know and so there you have it.
All right, today’s WYNK on this segment, what we’re going to talk about. Is Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair. The RNC chair has announced that I don’t know if she’s announced it formally, but she’s certainly leaked the news that she will not be continuing as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Now let’s do a little history. OK, here’s the history of what’s going on. I was on the RNC until 2015, and although I met Ronna a few times, she was then, I think the chairman. Yes, the chairman of Michigan, the Michigan Republican Party, and Reince Priebus was the the head of the RNC. And when Donald Trump won, Reince Priebus, who had been a Scott Walker guy, Reince Priebus is from Wisconsin, and knew Scott Walker, governor. Scott Walker for a long time, and when Governor Scott Walker ran for President, Reince Priebus was chairman of the RNC. He did not. He did not put his thumb on the scale for Walker, but everybody knew that was his buddy. They were very close, are very close personal friends, along with Paul Ryan, all those folks. So, Priebus though, after Trump wins the nomination, Priebus. Does what he can to help with the candidate win, and most people you, you have to go back in time to remember, most sort of Establishment Republicans thought Trump was gonna lose to Hillary just like the media and everybody wanted you to believe. Priebus to his credit worked hard to try to get Trump to win and spent a lot of his time trying to get Trump to win, including in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and other places. And so when he won, what is little known, but it is, you know, known by me and now by you is Paul Ryan and others really wanted Reince Priebus to be chief of staff to the President, and Reince really wanted that job. The problem is the job of Chief of staff to the President of the United States is is one of the greatest jobs in the history of humankind. But it’s also a very complicated job. You have to be a really good political guy and a really good manager. Because it’s a big time managing job, but it’s also a political job. I know because I was chief of staff to a governor and in a very small way it’s a similar role.
So Priebus got the job. Trump offered it to him and he was in over his head. Reince Priebus did not succeed at that job. He he really didn’t know how to manage. He didn’t know government and and he was in over his head like a lot of people, and especially for Trump. Trump is a very complicated guy to work for, meaning he’s very demanding and he’s serious and he’s a challenge and he’s a he’s a big time guy himself, and so anyway. So Priebus didn’t last. But before Reince Priebus left the left the the RNC, what he did was he positioned things, and he made sure that the votes of the 168 members of the RNC went for Ronna McDaniel and, Ronna McDaniel, and he convinced Trump as president that this was a good idea, that Ronna had won Michigan. She’d worked hard for Trump. Forget her middle name or her her maiden name. Sorry, which is Romney, she was a total Trumper. She was good. She was great in 2016. So Reince said, hey, take Ronna. And Ronna was basically a continuation of the Reince Priebus era.
Well, what was the Reince Priebus at the RNC? They were pretty good at fundraising, but they did the same stuff they’ve done before. And if you want me to be totally candid, they were totally safe, totally establishment, totally buffeted by the modern Republican RINO party in general and the same consultants got paid under Priebus. And under Ronna McDaniel. So nothing really changed.
And by the time you got all the way forward to 2020, most people agreed the RNC was not particularly dynamic and not particularly successful. It was Trump, the sitting president, who was dynamic and successful. And so there you have it. But since Trump picked Ronna, and since, you know, President Trump wanted her, she got the job and people weren’t gonna mess with her.
Now, after 2020 and certainly after, actually after 2018, usually an RNC chair would quit. It was such a bad cycle, you’d usually quit. She didn’t. She wanted to stay. Trump let her stay. After 2020, it was messy enough that it wasn’t obvious that she should quit, although she should have. And by what I mean by that is, it was a failure. 2020, even if you believe, as I do, that the Democrats gamed the system and in many places probably cheated, the the Trump campaign was not served by an RNC that was planning ahead. They didn’t have the lawyers in place. They didn’t have the details in place. They just they just, they weren’t ready like they should have been. So Ronna McDanel didn’t resign, though, and she continued to serve.
Well, OK, so over the weekend, Donald Trump floats the fact that he is gonna ask for changes. And he had met with her and he told her that and he allowed her the space. There’s a Republican National Committee meeting was late last week, and she announced and leaked that she’s going to resign. And she’s going to move on and Trump will have a chance, I think, to back a candidate.
Remember the voters for the RNC are not the rank and file, it’s the 168 members of the Republican National Committee. And you say, how do you get to 100 and 168? And the answer is because every state has three. Every state has three and meaning they have a chairman and the committeeman and a committeewoman. And then there are these territories, there’s these territories that are out in, in Guam and Marianas Island, Northern Marianas Island, Puerto Rico. They each get three also. So you get up to 100 and what did I say, 168. I think that’s right, 168. I think that’s the right number.
And and so the. The reality is there will now be, Trump’s gotta back a chairman or a member, someone that would be palatable to the 168, and it’s usually someone from among the ranks. And it looks like it’s gonna be the North Carolina chairman. But here’s the problem.
The problem is this. The party structure in American politics has been dramatically changed in the last two decades. Citizens United, the Supreme Court case that allows dark money to flow into elections, has meant that individual senators and presidents start their own PACs and super PACs because they can go and get massive sums of money. And in the old days, they needed to utilize this the party structure to raise money into the party and to work hand in glove with the party. Again, I know this from being chairman of the Missouri Republican Party. It used to be that in order to have enough money into the campaign of a of an election cycle, you use the party to raise money and the candidates and the incumbents all raise money into the party, which then ran get out the vote for everybody, and and then build out a structure for everybody.
But when you become a a senator and you know that you instead of having to rely on a party structure where you have to have congressmen and state reps and others running, you’re a US Senator, you raise your own money into a super PAC. And the Super PAC takes care of your stuff, and you don’t have to be tied as directly to to people that you Can’t control directly. That’s why Mitch Mitch McConnell is very successful at fundraising because he’s got all these super PACs in the structure.
So what you have is a a party structure. The Republican National Committee that does not right now lend itself to being in the system to working with any meaningful that you know it’s better to be outside the system. Unless you are the President, like Trump was to the RNC and Biden is to the DNC. Which is why the DNC has a lot more money right now because Trump, Biden is just raising it to the DNC, total control over it.
And now, when Trump secures the nomination, it will be easier for him to turn to the RNC and say now we’re working together. You know, we’re working, coordinated and it will probably work better. It will probably work better, but it does bring us to the the question going forward. Is – will there be Republicans who come up through the ranks as grassroots folks and have and and get into elected office Who can win,
Unless they have big money, which means you have to be in the tank for one of the big: big pharma big business, you know, big labor, there’s, there’s a handful of of bigs that you gotta be in good because that’s where the money is -big billionaires. I mean, that’s the big money guys. I mean that’s so that’s that’s the dynamic that’s happening.
And and once the reason why Ronna was pushed at this point was because Trump is now going to be the nominee, and it’s time for him to have a chance to get that thing ramped up. We’ll see if they do it different. We’ll see if the RNC does it differently than they’ve Done it in the past if they have a vision for how to protect the election and serve the President, and if it happens and that’s still out there to see. That’s what’s going on. That’s what you need to know.
We gotta take a break. We’ll be right back. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. We’ll be back in a moment.
