One of Donald J. Trump’s top allies on the Republican National Committee has withdrawn a planned resolution to try to force the party’s official organ to say that the race for the GOP presidential nomination is effectively over, even though only two states voted and Nikki Haley vowed to do so. continue his campaign against the dominant favorite.
David Bossie, a Maryland RNC committeeman and longtime Trump confidant, had proposed a draft resolution proclaiming Mr. Trump the party’s “presumptive” nominee, according to two people with direct knowledge of his role in that effort.
But he withdrew his plan to pass the resolution after Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social website that he did not want such a measure.
“While I greatly appreciate the fact that the Republican National Committee (RNC) wants to make me their PRESUMPTIVE CANDIDATE, and while they have many more votes than necessary to do so, I believe, in the interest of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT move forward with this plan, but that I should do it the old fashioned way and finish the process IN THE BALLOONS,” he wrote.
Mr. Bossie laid out his plan in an interview with television host Chris Cuomo on NewsNation after Mr. Trump won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.
“Donald Trump is apparently the nominee at this point,” Mr. Bossie said, adding that he would raise the issue at next week’s RNC meeting in Las Vegas. “It’s over and it’s time for us to come together.”
The resolution would have had no practical effect on the current primary elections, which are run at the state level by local officials, some of whom are members of the RNC but are required by state party rules to remain neutral. Resolutions like Mr. Bossie’s do not require the RNC to do anything or change the process by which candidates recruit delegates.
Still, a number of people may have wanted to support the resolution, in a symbolic show of support for Mr. Trump. And it could have allowed the committee to begin taking formal action to support him in a general election, as Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, faces pressure from a number of Republican officials to put end of his candidacy.
The news site The Dispatch was first to report the resolution. The document, which was independently obtained by The New York Times, states, in part, that “the Republican National Committee hereby declares President Trump to be our presumptive 2024 nominee for President of the United States and, from this moment, enters into full function”. general election mode welcoming supporters of all candidates as valuable members of Team Trump 2024.”
When asked how Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel planned to respond to the Bossie resolution, an RNC spokesman, Keith Schipper, said Ms. McDaniel had not introduced resolutions, but that members of the RNC had done it.
Mr. Bossie’s resolution “will be reviewed by the Resolutions Committee,” Mr. Schipper said earlier in the day, “and they will decide whether to send that resolution to be voted on by the 168 members of the RNC at our annual meeting next week. »
Mr. Bossie, who did not respond to requests for comment, had overseen the debate committee for the RNC. A senior Trump campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, declined to comment on the resolution.
The Trump campaign is desperate to end the primary race as soon as possible in order to conserve resources for an expected billion-dollar-plus general election showdown with President Biden. Mr. Trump also faces mounting legal costs and the possibility of multiple lawsuits before the election. Trump’s top advisers are eager to take control of the RNC and its treasury even before his July inauguration convention in Milwaukee, when the candidate is officially elected.
So far in the Republican race, Mr. Trump leads Ms. Haley among delegates, 32 to 17.
This is not the first time that supporters of Mr. Trump have been accused of trying to rig the party system in his favor. In the past, officials working for the super PAC that supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was once Mr. Trump’s primary rival, have accused the Trump campaign of “rigging” the delegation process in various states.
In response to pressure to declare Mr. Trump the presumptive nominee, Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, said in a statement: “Who cares what the RNC says? We will let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who our party’s nominee should be, not a group of Washington insiders.”
This week, Ms. McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, put her thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, following his 11-point victory over Ms. Haley in New Hampshire.
“I think there’s a clear message from voters that we need to unite around our eventual nominee, which will be Donald Trump,” Ms. McDaniel told Fox News Tuesday night.
His comments infuriated Haley’s supporters, including Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who describe his remarks as “absurd”.
Ms. McDaniel has come under intense pressure from several influential right-wing figures, including former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who have described her as out of touch with the Trump movement and criticized election losses during her tenure. and the depletion of the RNC’s finances.
Until New Hampshire, Ms. McDaniel had presented herself as neutral in the race for the nomination, even if her close personal relationship with Mr. Trump had aroused the suspicions of some of the former president’s rivals. Mr. Trump’s top aides had urged Ms. McDaniel, both publicly and privately, to end the Republican primary debates early, a move she had resisted.
Mr. Trump and his allies at all levels of the party are pushing hard to declare Mr. Trump the inevitable nominee and to eliminate his only remaining challenger, Ms. Haley.
On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump threatened Republican donors: assignment on her social media site that anyone making a contribution to Ms Haley “from now on” will be “permanently banned” from her camp.
To that end, Mr. Bossie’s draft resolution declared that “it is imperative for the well-being of all Americans that President Trump defeat President Biden in November and that all efforts and resources of patriots to national scale are focused exclusively on this and on Republican victories in the elections. »
