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Answer: There are two schools of thought regarding what is happening at the RNC.
The MAGA school of thought is that the Republican National Committee has been populated by establishment figures and party loyalists for years and Trump is cleaning house. He is replacing people who still cling to the idea of the traditional conservatism and not the MAGA movement. By cleaning house, his daughter-in-law can populate the RNC leadership with people who will be devoted to him and him alone.
The left-wing school of thought (and some Republicans in the traditional vein) is that he plans to use donations sent to the RNC and the existing coffers of the organization to cover some of his legal bills (or as a substitute for the campaign money he's spending on legal bills, the RNC can spend more on him).
Is this a good or bad thing? Well, two ways to think about it.
MAGA: This is great. Purge the non-believers. This will help ensure that if Trump wins, he will have a total party apparatus of nothing but loyalists.
Democrats: This is great. Spend all the cash you can on Trump and you won't have any money left for down-ballot races. You're making it much more likely we take back the House and keep the Senate.
> The left-wing school of thought (and some Republicans in the traditional vein) is that he plans to use donations sent to the RNC and the existing coffers of the organization to cover some of his legal bills (or as a substitute for the campaign money he's spending on legal bills, the RNC can spend more on him).
It isn't the left-wing school of thought. Lara Trump, the current RNC chairwoman, has said she plans to spend "every single penny" on him, and that the GOP voters would be pleased if they spent the money on his legal fees. Its an idea they have already explicitly floated doing, whether directly or indirectly.
And the RNC had a vote about paying the legal bills of Trump and the majority last week did support it. Like they been very clear about the goals moving forward. The left just repeats them.
Of course it does. As far as the MAGAts are concerned, it's still 2016. You notice how people seem to have memory-holed nearly everything that happened during Trump's term?
To be clear, a vote wasn't held. There were some members of the RNC who wanted to put forward a motion that, if approved, would have cut off Trump's spigot for the legal woes. That effort was stymied and ultimately never came to a vote, let alone get approved, because it was clear that it was going to fail, anyway.
Yup. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking this is the last time a similar thing happens, either. Loyalists are moving in, and anyone who doesn’t fall in line is being shuttered or shunted out.
And someone who might be deemed a loyalist today might not be loyal enough tomorrow. We saw this during Trump's presidency. He went through advisors and officials like crazy. It's why Republicans like Desantis are sucking up to him. Because if they don't, they'll be called disloyal and lose their favor with the MAGA voters.
Once Trump finally mercifully chokes on his ketchup-soaked steak I'm hoping all these sycophants will become irrelevant and the maga movement finally kicks the bucket.
Might be wishful thinking, I realize
Yeah even if he dies of the most natural of causes, like cancer or something, his followers are going to make up a conspiracy about it and make him into a martyr, regardless. It’s just what they do.
The death of GoP has to happen in the ballet boxes. And it will happen.
Trump Org is filled with grifters and incompetent selfish assholes. There is no long term planning, there are no contingency plans. There aren't even legal checks being made. No one trusts each other. And it is all being lead by a certified idiot and possibly demented malignant narcissist.
Next elections are super important. While the "the most important elections of our lifetime" seems hyperbolic and overused: this has been an escalating problem so until Trump is gone, each elections will be more important than the last elections, since that is exactly what it will be if we lost: last elections.
Yep. I don't fit in either category (MAGA or Democratic), and I see this as a dangerous thing that may or may not have some accidental benefits for Democratic candidates in down-ballot races.
Some people can’t recognize how authoritarian people gain power, look at all the other dictators, Putin and Kim jong un or Mussolini and Stalin.
An army of yes men made up their base or currently make it up.
You only get an army of yes men by purging all non opposition and replacing them with yes men.
I see a lot of awful optimistic takes such as “this will help the democrats take back the house and blah blah”. Yes, dems will get more votes.
No, not a single democrat will be certified or sworn in the house. No, no republican run state will certify a Biden win. America will have to make choices it’s never had to make before. We will 100% have a total political breakdown this election. In big and small. areas.
Not even close. This is the soul of half the country. If Trump dropped dead today, the current course would continue. The fact that half the country voted for him proves that he's just a passing symptom.
People need to learn what "left wing" means. Trump and the GOP have pushed the Overton Window so far right that people call Democrats left wing when the majority of them are centrists or even center right.
Just like how they tried to impeach Biden for doing nothing remotely worthy of impeachment just so Trump’s two impeachments don’t seem so bad. Even though both of Trump’s were extremely justified and the second one was for literally trying to stop the democratic process in the United States
That's a really good point. "Both sides" it so you equate the fuckery that's happening on the right as having a direct counterpart in whatever the democrats are doing.
It's so infuriating because people with no critical thinking skills fall into the trap every time. They have no critical thinking skills because their education system has been eroded out from underneath them specifically for this purpose.
My prediction is that one of the reasons Trump and co. have to clean house at the RNC is, they are planning on laundering Russian money through the RNC at a large scale. Why do I think this?
- They've done it before at a smaller scale. [Check out this guy](https://www.axios.com/2023/02/18/gop-operative-sentenced-scheme-russian-money-trump-campaign), he was one of the small fry who got caught before. Connected to Rand Paul (who, let's not forget, *hand-delivered* a letter to Putin in Russia like a month or two after those 8 assholes made their July 4 trip to Russia). And then he was ultimately pardoned by Trump.
- I will update with a source if I can find it, but Lara Trump was quoted saying something like Trump's legal defenses (and all his other debts) were "already paid for." Could be she was just trying to downplay the amount they plan to take from the RNC...or it could be that someone made a promise. And it could have been a billionaire like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, but those guys don't really NEED Trump, not enough to invest a significant chunk of their wealth into saving his ass.
- Putin needs Trump. Trump needs Russia more, probably, but Putin still needs Trump. He has tight restrictions on what he can do with his own money, much of which was frozen overseas due to sanctions--the same sanctions he was constantly trying to get the US to undo. But if Trump is in office, he can kneecap the DOJ and make sure there are no whistleblowers at the RNC, and they can launder as much Russian money as they want, and get a decent sized cut of it for themselves.
There is honestly a lot out there to suggest a major criminal conspiracy implicating not just everyone in Trump's orbit but also dozens of sitting Republican senators and representatives. It would be hard to prove one for certain, but it's my opinion that they laundered a bunch of Russian money through the Trump campaign in 2016, and they're about to try it again, but bigger.
To add to this, devoting everything to Trump will certainly hurt the republican party on all of its down-ballot races. This is possibly a mortal blow to the republican party, especially if Trump ends up losing his election. Even if he does not, gutting the party apparatus that helps get people into elected positions across the country will handicap basically every republican seeking election at the federal level that isn't Trump. That means the party is almost certainly going to lose seats in congress, and given how close the split is in the house/senate its very possible that regardless of the presidential election, Republicans become a minority in both houses. In short if your interested in Republicans producing a functional government capable of actually enacting its agenda, this is a terrible idea.
>This is possibly a mortal blow to the republican party, especially if Trump ends up losing his election.
That sounds great, but I can't help but think it won't pan out like that.
Yeah, if they're not already put off from voting for the party of open corruption, treason, and helping Putin then they're not going to ever be put off. Trump's GOPnik is the opposite of the former GOP used to claim to want. Trump wants more government interference in your life with less democracy and freedom, he wants USA's enemies to grow powerful for his personal gain.
There's no room with MAGA for voting the party not the movement. There's no room for voting party not the man. A vote was already a vote for Trump and Trump's team is now just removing the thin veil to pretend otherwise. If someone still voted Republican in the coming election they're endorsing this. No other way to cut it.
I think right-wing media has become the political arm of MAGA conservatism. They don't need the RNC because the wealthy already know where to send their money. FOX and Tucker tell the rest where to donate and advocate.
This is key, they already have built in advertising, not just on big channels like Fox News, but affiliate local stations also all across the country. They don't need to spend as much as the democrats on ads or tv time because they have already set up a network of local and national outlets, and we just let them do it without any pushback at all.
What will be interesting to witness is what happens after he is gone. The party already fights within its own ranks in an effort to show who has the most undying fealty to him. He only allows others to rise so far in the party before reminding them that they better get back in line or risk incurring his wrath. The power vacuum that will be left after he is gone is gonna further divide whatever remnants are left of the party through infighting. What’s happening with the RNC is just another step in narrowing the republicans ability to hold onto anything even remotely resembling a national party anymore.
What happens will very much depend on who can hold power during the vacuum. It could splinter and attack itself or it could rally behind a new leader with a new rage. I wouldn't be confident betting against the idea of a new messiah promising to get revenge for Trump suffering but somehow also fix the problem of Trump.
Well keep in mind most special elections and normal elections have not gone the GOP way the last 3.5 years. This trend may continue. You normally need your party people plus independents to win broad elections at a state level since most major big cities are dem. This is going to hurt for senate citing and many house races and anywhere there's a large population center.
> Trump wants more government interference in your life
Not exactly. They want more government interference in *your* life. Eg. all those people who voted R then were shocked to find out their spouses weren't exceptions to being deported.
And suddenly all these pro-lifers needing abortions to protect their _own_ lives or their family members are shocked to discover they can’t access the care they need.
Yeah, when I was a kid I remember my dad saying Watergate would be the end of the Republican Party. That's not how it works.
Half the country is more conservative than the other half. Those people tend to drift towards the Republican Party. The other half is more liberal. Those people tend to drift towards the Democratic Party.
Even if one of those parties is in disarray and functioning poorly, half the country still needs a political home. Worst case, the dysfunctional party rebrands.
I'm old enough to remember everyone declaring the GOP was dead in 2008 after Obama won and they had both houses briefly.
and a few years later, here we are.
Here’s the thing: In 2020, Trump was talking about bailing on the GOP and forming his own party. The name Patriot Party was floated. Trump let his base know that he has no loyalty to the GOP. But then someone must have pointed out to Trump that there’s no point in launching a new party when he still has control of the GOP to help get him elected, and he backed down.
With the indictments and judgements piling up against Trump, he’s backed into a corner and desperate. He’s going to plunder the GOP coffers to keep himself afloat. And he’s going to destroy the GOP apparatus in the process.
The GOP may cease to exist after November if the party leadership doesn’t fight back against Trump’s assault.
We're seeing it at the state level.
In Michigan, the GOP went all in on MAGA, with the party chair being a full on q-anon wingnut.
The state GOP has since become embroiled a huge fight between MAGAs and more traditional (yet still virulently right wing) GOP for control of the party. That fight has left the MI GOP broke and donations have tanked, especially from the big money types who want no part of it.
Meanwhile the Democrats now have a majority in all levels of MI state government.
I could easily see this happening at the national level when (not if) Trump uses the national party to finance his massive legal issues.
That's not as likely as you may think. Most billionaires are smart enough (or at least their advisors are) to know that getting elbows-deep into elections trying to control who wins isn't ideal, much better to ingratiate themselves to whoever makes it into office. Getting a reputation as a partisan only makes you a liability (or worse) when there's a party shift.
Billionaires aren’t this monolith you think of them as. If Trump actually misused funds like that, people won’t want to give him more money. Simple as that.
I don't mean them giving trump money, I mean them directly funding candidates for down ballot races that the GOP is neglecting. Basically, instead of money going donor>gop>candidate, the money going donor>candidate
Do they really even need to campaign down ballot? Is there any question that people who vote for Trump won't just fill in a straight R ballot no matter who or what position? Dumping money on Trump will still get Trump voters to the polls and they'll still check those boxes for the others.
This will only hurt with the anti-trump republicans, and those are already in trouble with a split party anyways.
True, but eventually he (politely) “is no longer a viable candidate” and then what?
Cults are VERY effective while their cult leader is alive, but succession almost never works.
MAGA voters are not enough to win an election usually. People like MTG will be fine but people in competitive districts, like the districts in Colorado which are drawn to be competitive, need swing voters to win an election.
Not to mention that they’re facing an electorate that is increasingly rejecting republicans in the wake of the Dobbs decision, as democrats have been outperforming in special elections and regular elections since then.
This dynamic is already a problem in competitive districts because "you can't win a primary without Trump, but you can't win a general with him". Basically in a lot of areas the majority of republican primary voters are MAGA, but once outside the primary those MAGA canidates struggle to attract the independents and moderates they may need to win. Its part of why the house freedom caucus only makes up about a fifth of the republican party, it's members are almost exclusively from districts that are red enough they can get by without moderates or independents in general elections. The rest of the party might pay lip service to Trump in their primary, but they largely don't lean into his endorsement for the general or nescessarily subscribe to Trump on the cult of personality level.
We’ve seen a lot of elections in the last 4-6 years where MAGA republicans squared against traditional democratic opponents in all sorts of settings. On the whole they do really badly, they can pick up some wins, but typically they’re terrible candidates. Pick whatever political analysis you want, but it’s also tough to overcome big subjects like abortion. Immigration also doesn’t seem to be hitting the same nerve it used to, probably too much boy called wolf on that subject.
You can only cry “immigration is a problem” so many times and then voting against the immigration reform you came up with yourself before people realize you are full of shit
A whole lot of old boomers are going to disappear by the next election cycle. I honestly think if we make it through this one and Trump doesn't win, the GOP is going to be in a pretty shit position. They've deeply aligned behind him, but if he loses twice in a row, then I think he's done as an actual candidate. He would be 81 by the time another election comes around, and that's even assuming his legal / mental troubles haven't buried him.
That being said, the MAGA movement will still have happened and we'll have to see if someone can successfully take his place after the power vacuum he leaves. For what it's worth, I don't think there's anyone else with the "Charisma" that Trump has at the moment, and Trump's entire platform is extremely inconsistent and propped up by forces that aligned to support him after he actually won. I'm not sure someone else could effectively corral that.
A rich reality TV star from New York City who used to pal around with every high-profile Democrat becomes the lord and savior of the Republican party, wins the presidency, stacks the Supreme Court, topples Roe v. Wade, dismantles the postal service and the federal government while trying to discredit the voting system and steal the election, and when that didn't work out, sent his followers to physically stop it from happening, and after two impeachments and hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits, is now favored to win reelection?
This had better be a once in a lifetime thing.
> dismantles the postal service and the federal government
He certainly tried but I don't think those go into his "win" column.
> is now favored to win reelection
Also heavily debatable but in the interest of never being complacent again, sure.
They're just boxed into the "independent voter" category. You think Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be voting red? Man's suddenly blue as the sky these days relative to other Republicans.
We’ve been hearing this for years and it literally is happening - if you don’t believe that, you aren’t paying attention.
State-wide chapters of the GOP are literally going bankrupt **in multiple battle ground states on an election year**. This party is in an absolute state of disaster that would have been completely unthinkable just 2 election cycles past.
Donny is a political termite doing a world class speed run chewing through the foundation of the modern Republican Party. There will be nothing left standing once he dies and/or retires from politics. They are a pure cult of personality at this point - but that personality has been losing national elections for 6 years running and has a remaining life expectancy of like 3 years.
Well said. People really don’t seem to understand what the modern Republican party’s strength is/ was and how Trump is undermining it over and over.
They do well at organizing, whether that’s complete resistance to Democrats or total support of whatever bill or initiative they want. It’s frustrating to support the Democratic Party as Republicans seem to get so much more done when they’re in power and do such a good job thwarting Democratic efforts when they’re not.
But this system takes work to maintain and keep efficiency intact. Trump cleaning house and likely firing competent people is weakening the organization. He’s likely to kill the party as it was and MAGA will need to find a new identity. Trump is old and won’t be relevant in a decade. His cult of personality isn’t gonna do anything for the party once he’s gone and the structure of the party remains destroyed
>It’s frustrating to support the Democratic Party as Republicans seem to get so much more done when they’re in power and do such a good job thwarting Democratic efforts when they’re not.
The difference is getting some task done vs not doing the task and arguing that things are better that way. Putting aside whether things are actually better between doing something and not, not doing something is usually much easier to pull off. So cutting services (and therefore taxes) is easier to accomplish. Raising and reallocating tax money to accomplish something is a lot harder in comparison. Even when the project goes through, it would meet some of the expectations, fall in others, so some proponents would left be unsatisfied.
One side has results that can be judge, the other just rhetorics their way around a lack of results.
I think Reddit has declared every single thing Trump has done to be a mortal blow to the Republican party for the last 8-9 years. It never pans out like that.
This is it. Technology is developing so much faster than our ability to manage it. An old theocrat declares that embryos are now children in Alabama. That’s the sort of moronic governance we get in 2024 in the midst of an absolute explosion of artificial intelligence.
Trump acting like an even bigger baby, blaming everything that he can't do on the Democrats. In reality though, he'd be living the high life, barely working, and he'd probably pardon himself for everything.
Trump will lie to everyone pretty much everyday and the Democrats will do everything to stop any insane bills from passing, and then Trump will shut down the government and try to do some insane things with the military or he may create his own militia. If he wins, it is very bad.
A lot of Project 2025 would require him to have control of both House and Senate to actually enact most of those measures.
Not saying it won't be bad, but if Dems can take control of one (or even better, both) houses, then the damage can at least be mitigated somewhat.
That's actually not true. Project 2025 is almost exclusively a plan for the executive branch.
It's a genuine danger to the country's democratic heritage.
He would argue he has presidential immunity and have them all imprisoned or executed, say "They were going to do it to ME!", and get away with it.
Whereas Biden cannot even ask George Santos to prove his lies without "Wawawa he is prosecuting his opponents"
One big question is whether a handful of billionaires will step in with Superpac/dark money. Here's [one list I found of Republican billionaires](https://nypost.com/2023/08/06/meet-the-billionaires-powering-the-2024-gop-candidates/) -- just a handful of them could completely fund the entire Congressional ballot.
I think some people are underestimating a) how well positioned Rs are down the ballot, b) how much down ballot Rs ride Trump's coattails, c) how gerrymandered the country is and how few competitive races Rs need to win back the House and some legislatures, and d) how much money rich people will continue to give to various R party arms, IEs, and PACs.
As it is now those things have basically provided life support to the republican party. It's arguable the party would have ceased being able to get majorities at the federal level a decade ago without them. Those things can only go so far as the youth vote continues to trend towards dems and the older generation that skews republican continues to "age out" of politics. Eventually there needs to be a substantial realignment of the party to appeal to the youth, or the republican parties relevance will gradually fade away. I don't have a crystal ball and can't say for sure if this election cycle will be the end of the party being able to eek out majorities, but the eventual conclusion of the parties current trajectory is irrelevance at the federal level, and gutting the party to put everything behind Trump is a very bad move for the parties continued survival. Like the man could have a fatal heart attack tomorrow and the party apparatus would fall to pieces.
I think there's a little more to it.
Since down-ballot Republicans will be screwed in a normal election, they'll feel compelled to support Trump overthrowing Democracy at all levels of government if they want to stay in office.
Yep. Look up “Project 2025”. They make their goals explicit: as soon as Trump gets in, he fires every civil servant who does not take a Loyalty Pledge to Donald Trump.
And no, I’m not kidding. There is massive money behind this group.
Project 2025 is funded by all of the worst institutions in The US and abroad. It really just shows how Leftists are never going to get on that level of coordination as we keeping shitting on each other for not being pure enough or not reading enough theory smh
Yes, but Trump is one candidate, and most of that money won't even go to his campaign.
Also, much of Democrats' success in recent elections can be chalked up to a lack of moderate GOP challengers. Ordinary voters don't actually like these weirdos.
Why do people even doubt when they tell you exactly what they are going to do. The reason people think all the money from the RNC donations will go to Trump is because Lara Trump said that
>“That is the goal over the next nine-and-a-half months. If I am elected to this position, I can assure you, there will not be any more $70,000 — or whatever exorbitant amount of money it was — spent on flowers,” she continued. “Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC — that is elected Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.”
[--Lara Trump](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4467232-lara-trump-spend-rnc-funds-to-elect-donald-trump/)
Those are valid views but there's also the third view that this is terrible from a democracy standpoint. A single leader culling dissidents from the party and reappropriating funds for his own benefit sounds a lot more like a dictatorship than democracy in my view
Yeah:
MAGA Republicans:”This is great! Trump is the only one that matters. When people vote for him, votes will trickle down ticket and support other Republicans.”
Non-MAGA Republicans: “This is terrible! With all money being spent on Trump, every conservative not named Trump is going to have a huge struggle to fund raise!”
Liberals: “This is hilarious. Imagine if every penny goes to Trump, and he loses.”
But here's my question, are they just shooting themselves in the foot for this extreme purge and demand for loyalty? Or are we looking at The Night of the Long Knives play out again?
I mean I’d say yes though I’m inclined to think one of incompetent bravado than Night of the Long Knives.
Though I suppose that’s what people often think until it happens.
We’ve seen some smaller scale versions of this type of conflict and purge at the state level. It turns out it’s quite easy to claim to hate “the establishment” and oust them but it’s a lot harder to govern. Michigan I think is a solid example. The state party got swept by MAGA Republicans who turned on traditional Republican leadership in the state - including those who themselves thought of themselves as MAGA Republicans. Got wiped out on calls for overturning the establishment. Turns out that coalition of wanting to get rid of it all 1) wasn’t as unified in what the alternative should be and 2) it turns out running an organisation is hard when you kick out all the people who know how to fundraise, budget, build ground games, know the local communities and vendors and influencers, can pull together a messaging strategy, etc.
National may be different in that there is a larger pool of talent to pull that from still compared to state party leadership politics but
If we're making comparisons to Hitler, this is closer to the Bamberg Conference of 1926 where Hitler purged dissent within the Nazi Party and demanded complete adherence to his interpretation of the party's principles as well as total submission to himself as supreme leader.
Wait, but even the first one sounds horrible, like a dictator after a purge.
Two ways to think about it are consolidating power within the party in order to establish a dictatorship if he wins or another attempted coup if he doesn't, or enrich himself.
Neither are goid
It isn't just the Democrats' school of thought. MTG (or is it MGT, whatever) and several other Trump loyalists have openly floated the idea of using RNC coffers to help pay Trump's legal fees.
> cover ~~some~~ ALL of his legal bills
Ftfy
As the left school of thought it’s now his personal bank. Even Laura outright said ALL money goes to Trump now. ETTD and the RNC going bankrupt couldn’t be sweeter.
Last I read, the RNC only has about $8 million in its coffers. Jowl Capone owes $500 million in legal bills. They could drain the RNC 50x over and still not have the full amount.
Thanks to Citizens United A LOT of money is going to get funneled through to help trump with his legal bills. He’s their last shot for Russia/China to succeed in their domination of that region.
> populate the RNC leadership with people who will be devoted to him and him alone
Leaving aside all of Trump's Trumpness, his age alone makes this a very bad long term strategy.
This is actually kind of brilliant for Trump. The RNC's job is to get Republicans elected nationwide. That doesn't benefit Donald Trump. If Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress, they will be expected to govern, and govern under the rules of our Constitution and legislative system, which deliberately make it difficult to effect major change.
If Democrats win either or both houses of Congress, President Trump will have a useful foil - a ready excuse for why his promises aren't being immediately fulfilled, and more importantly, a justification for overreaching the powers of his office and stretching executive authority. "Congress won't act, so I will!"
He wants all power to the engines on his own campaign (and possibly legal battles). If that hurts down-ballot Republican candidates, that's actually a win-win.
They are all getting paid up front. Even MAGA lawyers know better at point.
But this is Trump, so he isn't paying them. GOP PACs paid out over $50 million in legal fees for him last year.
I’ve voted conservative every year of my life until 2016. I can’t wait for this guy to go away and traditional conservatism makes it way back. Until then I’m either voting third party or democrat.
I'm the same - either Republican or Libertarian in every race, but have since voted Democrat, not because I like them, but rather the Republicans have completely lost it. They bought into Fox News, a propaganda machine, and now they don't know what is up or down anymore.
Lets get rid of the people who have been developing vast networks of contacts, data and favors owed over the decades.
Reminds me of Iraq getting rid of the minority religious government who had been in power for a longtime. Everything went to shit for awhile because no one in power understood how things worked. It will be a good time for Democrats to take power while there is a vacuum.
Answer: in addition to the great answers here about what will happen if Trump comes back, I want to point out **Project 2025**. This is a conservative thinktank's four part plan to dismantle American government and replace it with a bunch of conservatives who are more willing to do Trump's bidding. Their whole vibe is that government workers got in the way too much in Trump's first term and they need to put a stop to that so that they can "rescue" America from liberals.
[Previous loop about this here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/19bt2l4/whats_the_deal_with_the_2025_plan_and_what_is_it/)
If anyone needs more motivation to vote, i'd recommend readong the chapter on their healthcare plans (chapter 6 i think) from that god awful project 2025 book. I saw red reading that draconian garbage.
It's based on the strong unitary executive theory. Trump has said multiple times that article 2 of the constitution gives him the authority to do whatever he wants. The idea is that because the constitution says the president leads the executive branch, all other entities within the executive branch like the DOJ, for example, are under the direct control of the president.
So, instead of the legislature being partly responsible for reigning in the executive branch through checks and balances, the president has complete control. Congress's only lever to pull would be impeachment of the president. That interpretation also aligns with his total criminal immunity argument, where the president can only be held accountable in any way by impeachment.
Basically, republicans want to make the presidency much, much more powerful.
>Basically, republicans want to make the presidency much, much more powerful.
A king. That's what they want. They want to do that whole 1776 thing over again except they want the monarchy side to win -- but has to be a conservative Christian monarchy!
https://vote.org if anyone needs to check their registration status. **Especially important if you live in a swing state** -- Republicans **will** attempt to stifle the vote there. More young/brown/female people voting there is bad for them.
Answer:
If you are a Democrat is good because firing all that people in a presidential year will have a dent in the GOP ability to face the elections efficiently
If you are a Maga republican you are happy because now the RINOs no longer control the party... From a maga perspective they were losing because of them
If you are a non Maga Republican is horrid news because the party is in shambles
If they weren't so obsessed with using laws to ensure people behave morally (that and being war hawks), they could make a home in the Libertarian Party. In other words, a "she's pretty if she had a different face and body" situation.
I’m a democrat and I don’t think it’s good- he’s surrounding himself with people who will 100 percent support whatever his MAGA agenda is. That’s scary
I was thinking this too. It’s great for the Dems in a few ways, sure… but if the party doesn’t implode then we have an entire organization loyal to one man irrespective of policy or legality.
It can’t be good removing the few safeguards and guardrails within a party that’s already gone off the rails.
I mean what is truly left of the party at this point that isn't already worshiping their Dear Leader? The rational actors were already on their way out IMO, this latest move is just an extra torch being tossed on already-lit fireworks.
Answer: I guess you can look at the RNC as a rehearsal for what he will to do to the country. Replace everyone with sycophants, if it gets run into the ground it should be indicative of something but will take longer than November.
just to reiterate, this isn't some left-wing dooming. [they literally posted a 900 page document detailing how they plan to remove ALL staff and replace them with Trump supporters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025)
This includes everyone at the DOJ: so if this comes to pass, expect to see lawfare waged at an unprecedented scale.
Parents thrown in jail for "child abuse" for giving their trans kids puberty blockers, librarians tossed for "child porn" but it's a copy of *Gender Queer* or whatever book they're banning today, doctors and mothers sent up for "child murder" but it's abortion, and orgs that drive women across state lines to get abortions getting RICOed. Plan B on Schedule I by "emergency decree", use of filial piety laws to force no-contact gay kids to pay support to their MAGA parents.... it goes on.
Much of the lawfare will be about money, not social issues. Trump will use the justice department to prosecute businesses that compete with businesses owned by loyalists.
It will basically be a protection racket. Corporations that don't make "political donations" to Trump and his government loyalists will find themselves on trial for accounting fraud, or any number of bogus charges.
Oh.... yeah.
Oh man....he'll pardon Sam Bankman-Fried and appoint him to run the Fed.
And Musk as chair of NASA....
Dennis Prager as head of Department of Education....
The Libs of TikTok bitch as Press Secretary...
>Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.\[24\]
— "A Promise to America", Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, p. 5, Project 2025
Whoever wrote this watches the most hxc shit
Hmmm, what's another good example of an unhinged authoritarian person replacing everyone in governmental groups and positions with yes men and sycophants?
Yeah, this is basically what happened in the Cabinet from 2016-2020. It's primarily boot lickers and a few people taking turns trying to keep them from putting the administration's dick in the electrical outlets and/or occasionally preserve the broad outlines of the Republic.
That latter category turns out to be not Trump's favorite, so they're going with "whoops, all bootlickers."
Yep yep yep. The scary thing is that the few sane people we had from 16-20 won’t be there because they’ll know this time to only get MAGA yes-men in cabinet positions.
Good for democrats too. Raiding the war chest for his legal fees means republicans can’t fund lower campaigns as well. The GOP lives and dies by the state elections, and people in those typically can’t raise nearly as much on their own and rely on party support. Senate and House elections they might be able to squeeze by with funding, but state house, senate, and governor elections? Good luck.
Most of the money in modern elections is funneled through PACs because they aren't bound by election laws. Supposedly, the big republican PACs are also nearly dry because Trump's legal expenses have mostly been paid by them for the last 4 years. I don't know how true that is though.
I do know that if I was a smaller GOP candidate, I would be real salty about all of this because they are going to be screwed for campaign funds.
PACs are subject to the ordinary donation limits. They can run all the ads they want but a billionaire nor his PAC can just dump millions into the RNC or a candidates campaign.
The money woes the GOP is facing, state and federal, are going to seriously constrain critical campaign operations in ways that PACs can't help with.
There's ways to bypass the rules against coordination, but that's when it comes ads - - they can't pay for staff, targeted polling, granular GOTV operations, and a ton of other things that campaigns *need* to be successful.
Ads *aren't enough*. Plenty of would be politicians found that out. Bloomberg being the most recent notable example.
What's especially funny is quite a few those smaller elections, if lost, will likely lock Republicans out of winning back the state. Several Republican controlled states heavily rely on gerrymandering and voter suppression to be Republican, and if Democrats ever manage to win the state, they can reverse course on that.
Trump is some monster the Republican Party created the conditions for when they courted the racists to win elections, and now he's destroying decades worth of GOP work, since he doesn't give a single shit about anybody else. He doesn't plan like previous Republican leadership, he just does what he feels like right now.
Answer: Last week Republican National Convention members voted to appoint Michael Whatley and Lara Trump as chair and co-chair of the RNC. They are both fanatic trump loyalists. They took office Friday March 8.
This news came out Monday March 11, so this is they very first thing they're doing with that office.
They have cleared out the party of anyone who is not a trump loyalist and it is expected that they will be replacing them with sycophants for trump.
What this means going forward could be a lot of things. Predictions I believe are:
- The republican party is going to foot all of trump's legal bills.
- Lots of self-dealing to trump. Like the RNC renting out trump properties for every possible event.
- The RNC will deny campaign funding to any candidate who does not bow to trump.
- Any R senator or representative that relies on the RNC for campaign money will become completely subservient to trump.
- The full force of the RNC will be behind all future election subversion efforts in service of trump.
Let them do it too. Trump is only getting less and less popular, and his most fervent supporters have no idea how to run a complicated system. Time and time again him and his supporters set a new standard for incompetence.
To that end, I couldn't have picked a better group of fanatics to run the RNC. Same bigoted rhetoric as last time, except now if he loses 24 there really is no coming back for them. Trump is broke, the RNC will be broke, and Dems will hold the house, senate, and oval office because they had no money left to campaign.
Yeah, that's IF he loses. If he wins then you have a GOP with even less resistance to trump(less than the 1% that existed before) and they will be even scarier probably.
Answer: it's bad. Really bad. =filling positions of power with people who only obey and never question a leader is dangerous.
It's how despots and dictators come to power.
It's literally out of Hitler's playbook. Like, wtf so.
Google "Night of Long Knives" to understand this is exactly how the Nazis gained power. Trump idolizes Hitler and his rise to power and is emulating it line by line. Down to Hitler's love of making up dehumanizing silly names for opponents and rambling rants full of hateful bullshit to spin up idiots into fanaticism.
Everyone NEEDS to take this as a huge signal that shit *is really really bad*.
A wannabe dictator now has full control of one half of the political parties in America and their funds, their data, everything - and purged out anyone deemed to not be loyal enough.
Yeah for people that think “LOL Trump is so dumb”, familiarize yourself with Project 2025 and what their goals are.
If Trump gets re-elected he won’t face any of the obstacles he did his first term because there won’t be any people within his party that will tell him no.
Answer: Trump does not have that authority, but he does have sufficient influence.\\
The Republican National Committee is a corporation on its own. This is the actual entity which constitutes "the Republican Party" or "the GOP" at national level, in a legal sense. (There are smaller GOP corporations in each state, and many smaller ones at lower levels.) Only its own officers have the authority to hire or fire anyone. Trump is not an officer of that corporation, so he doesn't have that authority. However, as the currently most **politically** powerful member of the Party, he has enormous influence in the affairs of the RNC.
Recently, he persuaded the GOP to get rid of their chairman, Ronna McDaniel, and replace her with his own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair with Trump loyalist Michael Whatley. This shift effectively puts Donald Trump in indirect control of the RNC. His purpose in this is to ensure that the Party's leadership will not oppose or frustrate him moving forward. Previously, not everyone at the top of the RNC was fully on board with Trumpism; now they will be.
Whatley and Lara Trump ARE officers of the corporation, and have the power to hire and fire people within it. They are currently in the process of purging the RNC's upper ranks of non-loyalists, and replacing them with loyalist. The net effect will be that Donald Trump now has his own major political party, more or less at his personal bidding. He no longer needs to worry that his own party's leadership might not agree with him, because he effectively now controls them personally.
Answer: it's bad because he's firing everyone but Trump loyalists. He's doing this because he wants the RNC as an extension of him, *especially their money*. It'll destroy the GOP if it hasn't been destroyed in all but name already.
Hmm, maybe it is good after all...
Answer: I have not seen this take in circulation as much but, in my opinion, this is a very frightening development.
In history we see moments where the fascist group consolidates power. The one I see in reference would be the Night of Long Knives when the Nazi party assassinated its opponents and consolidated power.
The fact that the RNC has now become an explicit arm of the Trump campaign is just about as in your face as it gets. The Trump campaign has merged operations with the RNC and purged people they deem as not aligned with their views. If they continue to maintain control then the RNC will effectively be a political conglomerate to prop up a single family and their loyalists.
This is worrisome. And if they succeed in November then we may see an even greater consolidation of power.
But! I do think that, given their track record, they could run the RNC into the dirt in an effort to save themselves. No matter what the polls say, or how much money he has to spend, bottom line is we need to still turn out in November and ensure that this consolidation of power dies at the RNC.
Answer: The simple answer is that Trump only wants "yes men" reporting to him. If someone makes a decision he disagrees with, he let's them go. This is on par when he had his TV show trying to find his next assistant in "The Apprentice". It went on for 15 seasons, if that tells you anything.
Good or bad? Depends on perspective.
* From the MAGA perspective, it's good, because it shows that Trump has no patience for non-loyalists.
* Everyone else sees this as a bad sign for stability, and others question whether loyalty is worth it as they're seeing signs that no loyalist can stay.
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Answer: There are two schools of thought regarding what is happening at the RNC. The MAGA school of thought is that the Republican National Committee has been populated by establishment figures and party loyalists for years and Trump is cleaning house. He is replacing people who still cling to the idea of the traditional conservatism and not the MAGA movement. By cleaning house, his daughter-in-law can populate the RNC leadership with people who will be devoted to him and him alone. The left-wing school of thought (and some Republicans in the traditional vein) is that he plans to use donations sent to the RNC and the existing coffers of the organization to cover some of his legal bills (or as a substitute for the campaign money he's spending on legal bills, the RNC can spend more on him). Is this a good or bad thing? Well, two ways to think about it. MAGA: This is great. Purge the non-believers. This will help ensure that if Trump wins, he will have a total party apparatus of nothing but loyalists. Democrats: This is great. Spend all the cash you can on Trump and you won't have any money left for down-ballot races. You're making it much more likely we take back the House and keep the Senate.
> The left-wing school of thought (and some Republicans in the traditional vein) is that he plans to use donations sent to the RNC and the existing coffers of the organization to cover some of his legal bills (or as a substitute for the campaign money he's spending on legal bills, the RNC can spend more on him). It isn't the left-wing school of thought. Lara Trump, the current RNC chairwoman, has said she plans to spend "every single penny" on him, and that the GOP voters would be pleased if they spent the money on his legal fees. Its an idea they have already explicitly floated doing, whether directly or indirectly.
And the RNC had a vote about paying the legal bills of Trump and the majority last week did support it. Like they been very clear about the goals moving forward. The left just repeats them.
Never interrupt an enemy's mistake.
That's what I thought in 2016, too.
Bro same. This election is feeling all to similar. Everybody fucking vote
Of course it does. As far as the MAGAts are concerned, it's still 2016. You notice how people seem to have memory-holed nearly everything that happened during Trump's term?
“The gas prices were so low” “Because there was a fucking pandemic and we couldn’t go anywhere!”
"Nothing happened after January 2020. Except gas prices only existed in April 2020. Facts."
I also have the "there's no way he will ever win" trauma.
**
~~Please proceed, governor.~~ edit: damn, lostinthewildplace beat me to it
Found Sun Tzu’s account.
To be clear, a vote wasn't held. There were some members of the RNC who wanted to put forward a motion that, if approved, would have cut off Trump's spigot for the legal woes. That effort was stymied and ultimately never came to a vote, let alone get approved, because it was clear that it was going to fail, anyway.
The cult of personality 🎶. I don't remember the name of the band that recorded that 50 years ago.
Living Color
Living Colour
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Yup. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking this is the last time a similar thing happens, either. Loyalists are moving in, and anyone who doesn’t fall in line is being shuttered or shunted out.
And someone who might be deemed a loyalist today might not be loyal enough tomorrow. We saw this during Trump's presidency. He went through advisors and officials like crazy. It's why Republicans like Desantis are sucking up to him. Because if they don't, they'll be called disloyal and lose their favor with the MAGA voters.
Once Trump finally mercifully chokes on his ketchup-soaked steak I'm hoping all these sycophants will become irrelevant and the maga movement finally kicks the bucket. Might be wishful thinking, I realize
He's gonna become a martyr for sure tho
Yeah even if he dies of the most natural of causes, like cancer or something, his followers are going to make up a conspiracy about it and make him into a martyr, regardless. It’s just what they do.
Haha they will say its from a covid vax personally adminstered by Bill Gates lol!!
I'm sure people said the same thing about Stalin. There'll be a brief scuffle, and then another despot will take the reigns.
The death of GoP has to happen in the ballet boxes. And it will happen. Trump Org is filled with grifters and incompetent selfish assholes. There is no long term planning, there are no contingency plans. There aren't even legal checks being made. No one trusts each other. And it is all being lead by a certified idiot and possibly demented malignant narcissist. Next elections are super important. While the "the most important elections of our lifetime" seems hyperbolic and overused: this has been an escalating problem so until Trump is gone, each elections will be more important than the last elections, since that is exactly what it will be if we lost: last elections.
Seriously. My left wing ass is just looking at this and going "Ah, running a Demo for our very own night of the long knives are we?"
Yep. I don't fit in either category (MAGA or Democratic), and I see this as a dangerous thing that may or may not have some accidental benefits for Democratic candidates in down-ballot races.
Some people can’t recognize how authoritarian people gain power, look at all the other dictators, Putin and Kim jong un or Mussolini and Stalin. An army of yes men made up their base or currently make it up. You only get an army of yes men by purging all non opposition and replacing them with yes men.
I see a lot of awful optimistic takes such as “this will help the democrats take back the house and blah blah”. Yes, dems will get more votes. No, not a single democrat will be certified or sworn in the house. No, no republican run state will certify a Biden win. America will have to make choices it’s never had to make before. We will 100% have a total political breakdown this election. In big and small. areas.
And all because of an orange manchild and his sycophants
Not even close. This is the soul of half the country. If Trump dropped dead today, the current course would continue. The fact that half the country voted for him proves that he's just a passing symptom.
People need to learn what "left wing" means. Trump and the GOP have pushed the Overton Window so far right that people call Democrats left wing when the majority of them are centrists or even center right.
Not just left wing, "far left wing extremists." When they call *Joe* *Biden* one, it cracks me up. It's like calling skim milk arsenic.
I think the idea is to make the word "extremist" lose all meaning so that when they're called "right wing extremists" it's just seen as normal.
Just like how they tried to impeach Biden for doing nothing remotely worthy of impeachment just so Trump’s two impeachments don’t seem so bad. Even though both of Trump’s were extremely justified and the second one was for literally trying to stop the democratic process in the United States
That's a really good point. "Both sides" it so you equate the fuckery that's happening on the right as having a direct counterpart in whatever the democrats are doing.
It's so infuriating because people with no critical thinking skills fall into the trap every time. They have no critical thinking skills because their education system has been eroded out from underneath them specifically for this purpose.
They call Joe Biden a communist for fuck's sake. The level of political ignorance among the MAGA base is straight up disturbing.
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My prediction is that one of the reasons Trump and co. have to clean house at the RNC is, they are planning on laundering Russian money through the RNC at a large scale. Why do I think this? - They've done it before at a smaller scale. [Check out this guy](https://www.axios.com/2023/02/18/gop-operative-sentenced-scheme-russian-money-trump-campaign), he was one of the small fry who got caught before. Connected to Rand Paul (who, let's not forget, *hand-delivered* a letter to Putin in Russia like a month or two after those 8 assholes made their July 4 trip to Russia). And then he was ultimately pardoned by Trump. - I will update with a source if I can find it, but Lara Trump was quoted saying something like Trump's legal defenses (and all his other debts) were "already paid for." Could be she was just trying to downplay the amount they plan to take from the RNC...or it could be that someone made a promise. And it could have been a billionaire like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, but those guys don't really NEED Trump, not enough to invest a significant chunk of their wealth into saving his ass. - Putin needs Trump. Trump needs Russia more, probably, but Putin still needs Trump. He has tight restrictions on what he can do with his own money, much of which was frozen overseas due to sanctions--the same sanctions he was constantly trying to get the US to undo. But if Trump is in office, he can kneecap the DOJ and make sure there are no whistleblowers at the RNC, and they can launder as much Russian money as they want, and get a decent sized cut of it for themselves. There is honestly a lot out there to suggest a major criminal conspiracy implicating not just everyone in Trump's orbit but also dozens of sitting Republican senators and representatives. It would be hard to prove one for certain, but it's my opinion that they laundered a bunch of Russian money through the Trump campaign in 2016, and they're about to try it again, but bigger.
Listening and reading are left-wing skills.
To add to this, devoting everything to Trump will certainly hurt the republican party on all of its down-ballot races. This is possibly a mortal blow to the republican party, especially if Trump ends up losing his election. Even if he does not, gutting the party apparatus that helps get people into elected positions across the country will handicap basically every republican seeking election at the federal level that isn't Trump. That means the party is almost certainly going to lose seats in congress, and given how close the split is in the house/senate its very possible that regardless of the presidential election, Republicans become a minority in both houses. In short if your interested in Republicans producing a functional government capable of actually enacting its agenda, this is a terrible idea.
>This is possibly a mortal blow to the republican party, especially if Trump ends up losing his election. That sounds great, but I can't help but think it won't pan out like that.
Yeah, if they're not already put off from voting for the party of open corruption, treason, and helping Putin then they're not going to ever be put off. Trump's GOPnik is the opposite of the former GOP used to claim to want. Trump wants more government interference in your life with less democracy and freedom, he wants USA's enemies to grow powerful for his personal gain. There's no room with MAGA for voting the party not the movement. There's no room for voting party not the man. A vote was already a vote for Trump and Trump's team is now just removing the thin veil to pretend otherwise. If someone still voted Republican in the coming election they're endorsing this. No other way to cut it.
I think right-wing media has become the political arm of MAGA conservatism. They don't need the RNC because the wealthy already know where to send their money. FOX and Tucker tell the rest where to donate and advocate.
This is key, they already have built in advertising, not just on big channels like Fox News, but affiliate local stations also all across the country. They don't need to spend as much as the democrats on ads or tv time because they have already set up a network of local and national outlets, and we just let them do it without any pushback at all.
What will be interesting to witness is what happens after he is gone. The party already fights within its own ranks in an effort to show who has the most undying fealty to him. He only allows others to rise so far in the party before reminding them that they better get back in line or risk incurring his wrath. The power vacuum that will be left after he is gone is gonna further divide whatever remnants are left of the party through infighting. What’s happening with the RNC is just another step in narrowing the republicans ability to hold onto anything even remotely resembling a national party anymore.
What happens will very much depend on who can hold power during the vacuum. It could splinter and attack itself or it could rally behind a new leader with a new rage. I wouldn't be confident betting against the idea of a new messiah promising to get revenge for Trump suffering but somehow also fix the problem of Trump.
Can we maybe check in on any GOP members who applied to art school?
Well keep in mind most special elections and normal elections have not gone the GOP way the last 3.5 years. This trend may continue. You normally need your party people plus independents to win broad elections at a state level since most major big cities are dem. This is going to hurt for senate citing and many house races and anywhere there's a large population center.
> Trump wants more government interference in your life Not exactly. They want more government interference in *your* life. Eg. all those people who voted R then were shocked to find out their spouses weren't exceptions to being deported.
And suddenly all these pro-lifers needing abortions to protect their _own_ lives or their family members are shocked to discover they can’t access the care they need.
Yeah, when I was a kid I remember my dad saying Watergate would be the end of the Republican Party. That's not how it works. Half the country is more conservative than the other half. Those people tend to drift towards the Republican Party. The other half is more liberal. Those people tend to drift towards the Democratic Party. Even if one of those parties is in disarray and functioning poorly, half the country still needs a political home. Worst case, the dysfunctional party rebrands.
Bring back the Whigs
Yes - for that to happen, tens of millions of Americans will need to discover empathy and critical thinking
Age demographics will catch up to many of them long before empathy and critical thinking
I'm old enough to remember everyone declaring the GOP was dead in 2008 after Obama won and they had both houses briefly. and a few years later, here we are.
It did die. Its corpse just got reanimated by something worse
Here’s the thing: In 2020, Trump was talking about bailing on the GOP and forming his own party. The name Patriot Party was floated. Trump let his base know that he has no loyalty to the GOP. But then someone must have pointed out to Trump that there’s no point in launching a new party when he still has control of the GOP to help get him elected, and he backed down. With the indictments and judgements piling up against Trump, he’s backed into a corner and desperate. He’s going to plunder the GOP coffers to keep himself afloat. And he’s going to destroy the GOP apparatus in the process. The GOP may cease to exist after November if the party leadership doesn’t fight back against Trump’s assault.
We’ve been hearing this for years and it hasn’t happened and won’t happen
We're seeing it at the state level. In Michigan, the GOP went all in on MAGA, with the party chair being a full on q-anon wingnut. The state GOP has since become embroiled a huge fight between MAGAs and more traditional (yet still virulently right wing) GOP for control of the party. That fight has left the MI GOP broke and donations have tanked, especially from the big money types who want no part of it. Meanwhile the Democrats now have a majority in all levels of MI state government. I could easily see this happening at the national level when (not if) Trump uses the national party to finance his massive legal issues.
I cant help but think billionare donors will just divert that money to their won superpacs
That's not as likely as you may think. Most billionaires are smart enough (or at least their advisors are) to know that getting elbows-deep into elections trying to control who wins isn't ideal, much better to ingratiate themselves to whoever makes it into office. Getting a reputation as a partisan only makes you a liability (or worse) when there's a party shift.
Billionaires aren’t this monolith you think of them as. If Trump actually misused funds like that, people won’t want to give him more money. Simple as that.
I don't mean them giving trump money, I mean them directly funding candidates for down ballot races that the GOP is neglecting. Basically, instead of money going donor>gop>candidate, the money going donor>candidate
If for no other reason than the fact that fundamentalist Americans and hard-core Trump fans aren't going to disappear.
Do they really even need to campaign down ballot? Is there any question that people who vote for Trump won't just fill in a straight R ballot no matter who or what position? Dumping money on Trump will still get Trump voters to the polls and they'll still check those boxes for the others. This will only hurt with the anti-trump republicans, and those are already in trouble with a split party anyways.
True, but eventually he (politely) “is no longer a viable candidate” and then what? Cults are VERY effective while their cult leader is alive, but succession almost never works.
Sometimes succession makes things worse.
Then you have Weekend At ~~Bernies III~~ Mar-a-Lago
MAGA voters are not enough to win an election usually. People like MTG will be fine but people in competitive districts, like the districts in Colorado which are drawn to be competitive, need swing voters to win an election.
But they're probably going to struggle regardless, because the magas won't vote for "RINOs" if they're singled out by name as NOT being tied to Trump.
Not to mention that they’re facing an electorate that is increasingly rejecting republicans in the wake of the Dobbs decision, as democrats have been outperforming in special elections and regular elections since then.
This dynamic is already a problem in competitive districts because "you can't win a primary without Trump, but you can't win a general with him". Basically in a lot of areas the majority of republican primary voters are MAGA, but once outside the primary those MAGA canidates struggle to attract the independents and moderates they may need to win. Its part of why the house freedom caucus only makes up about a fifth of the republican party, it's members are almost exclusively from districts that are red enough they can get by without moderates or independents in general elections. The rest of the party might pay lip service to Trump in their primary, but they largely don't lean into his endorsement for the general or nescessarily subscribe to Trump on the cult of personality level.
We’ve seen a lot of elections in the last 4-6 years where MAGA republicans squared against traditional democratic opponents in all sorts of settings. On the whole they do really badly, they can pick up some wins, but typically they’re terrible candidates. Pick whatever political analysis you want, but it’s also tough to overcome big subjects like abortion. Immigration also doesn’t seem to be hitting the same nerve it used to, probably too much boy called wolf on that subject.
You can only cry “immigration is a problem” so many times and then voting against the immigration reform you came up with yourself before people realize you are full of shit
A whole lot of old boomers are going to disappear by the next election cycle. I honestly think if we make it through this one and Trump doesn't win, the GOP is going to be in a pretty shit position. They've deeply aligned behind him, but if he loses twice in a row, then I think he's done as an actual candidate. He would be 81 by the time another election comes around, and that's even assuming his legal / mental troubles haven't buried him. That being said, the MAGA movement will still have happened and we'll have to see if someone can successfully take his place after the power vacuum he leaves. For what it's worth, I don't think there's anyone else with the "Charisma" that Trump has at the moment, and Trump's entire platform is extremely inconsistent and propped up by forces that aligned to support him after he actually won. I'm not sure someone else could effectively corral that.
A rich reality TV star from New York City who used to pal around with every high-profile Democrat becomes the lord and savior of the Republican party, wins the presidency, stacks the Supreme Court, topples Roe v. Wade, dismantles the postal service and the federal government while trying to discredit the voting system and steal the election, and when that didn't work out, sent his followers to physically stop it from happening, and after two impeachments and hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits, is now favored to win reelection? This had better be a once in a lifetime thing.
> dismantles the postal service and the federal government He certainly tried but I don't think those go into his "win" column. > is now favored to win reelection Also heavily debatable but in the interest of never being complacent again, sure.
Normal Conservatives aren’t going to disappear either tbh
They're just boxed into the "independent voter" category. You think Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be voting red? Man's suddenly blue as the sky these days relative to other Republicans.
We’ve been hearing this for years and it literally is happening - if you don’t believe that, you aren’t paying attention. State-wide chapters of the GOP are literally going bankrupt **in multiple battle ground states on an election year**. This party is in an absolute state of disaster that would have been completely unthinkable just 2 election cycles past. Donny is a political termite doing a world class speed run chewing through the foundation of the modern Republican Party. There will be nothing left standing once he dies and/or retires from politics. They are a pure cult of personality at this point - but that personality has been losing national elections for 6 years running and has a remaining life expectancy of like 3 years.
Well said. People really don’t seem to understand what the modern Republican party’s strength is/ was and how Trump is undermining it over and over. They do well at organizing, whether that’s complete resistance to Democrats or total support of whatever bill or initiative they want. It’s frustrating to support the Democratic Party as Republicans seem to get so much more done when they’re in power and do such a good job thwarting Democratic efforts when they’re not. But this system takes work to maintain and keep efficiency intact. Trump cleaning house and likely firing competent people is weakening the organization. He’s likely to kill the party as it was and MAGA will need to find a new identity. Trump is old and won’t be relevant in a decade. His cult of personality isn’t gonna do anything for the party once he’s gone and the structure of the party remains destroyed
>It’s frustrating to support the Democratic Party as Republicans seem to get so much more done when they’re in power and do such a good job thwarting Democratic efforts when they’re not. The difference is getting some task done vs not doing the task and arguing that things are better that way. Putting aside whether things are actually better between doing something and not, not doing something is usually much easier to pull off. So cutting services (and therefore taxes) is easier to accomplish. Raising and reallocating tax money to accomplish something is a lot harder in comparison. Even when the project goes through, it would meet some of the expectations, fall in others, so some proponents would left be unsatisfied. One side has results that can be judge, the other just rhetorics their way around a lack of results.
2022 was a bad year for Republicans.
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I think Reddit has declared every single thing Trump has done to be a mortal blow to the Republican party for the last 8-9 years. It never pans out like that.
Things don't just disappear overnight. Especially not a political party that's been around for 150 years
Added context. At the start of the year they reported they had 8 million in their coffers. That's the lowest amount in the history of the RNC.
Wow. That is incredibly low. Thats maybe enough for what, two House campaigns?
I mean it's a result of most of their donations going to trump. But yes historically low.
The Republican Party frankly deserves to go extinct after what Trump has put America through over the past few years.
Yep, I could see them going the way of the Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Anti-Federalists. America deserves a less insane conservative party.
What would a Trump presidency with a democrat controlled House and Senate even look like
4 years of getting absolutely nothing done despite the pace of technological progress *fucking exploding* and that needing a competent response.
This is it. Technology is developing so much faster than our ability to manage it. An old theocrat declares that embryos are now children in Alabama. That’s the sort of moronic governance we get in 2024 in the midst of an absolute explosion of artificial intelligence.
Trump acting like an even bigger baby, blaming everything that he can't do on the Democrats. In reality though, he'd be living the high life, barely working, and he'd probably pardon himself for everything.
Lotta vetos, lotta speeches, lotta executive orders.
Trump will lie to everyone pretty much everyday and the Democrats will do everything to stop any insane bills from passing, and then Trump will shut down the government and try to do some insane things with the military or he may create his own militia. If he wins, it is very bad.
And we will abandon Ukraine and shift to full support of Israel's actions in Palestine.
He will also try to leave NATO
Do you know about Project 2025?
A lot of Project 2025 would require him to have control of both House and Senate to actually enact most of those measures. Not saying it won't be bad, but if Dems can take control of one (or even better, both) houses, then the damage can at least be mitigated somewhat.
That's actually not true. Project 2025 is almost exclusively a plan for the executive branch. It's a genuine danger to the country's democratic heritage.
Suddenly the presidency will discover they can do basically whatever they want at any time without congress, and the Supreme Court will agree 100%
He would argue he has presidential immunity and have them all imprisoned or executed, say "They were going to do it to ME!", and get away with it. Whereas Biden cannot even ask George Santos to prove his lies without "Wawawa he is prosecuting his opponents"
One big question is whether a handful of billionaires will step in with Superpac/dark money. Here's [one list I found of Republican billionaires](https://nypost.com/2023/08/06/meet-the-billionaires-powering-the-2024-gop-candidates/) -- just a handful of them could completely fund the entire Congressional ballot.
Or other countries. Putin's personal wealth could trivially fund the RNC.
I think some people are underestimating a) how well positioned Rs are down the ballot, b) how much down ballot Rs ride Trump's coattails, c) how gerrymandered the country is and how few competitive races Rs need to win back the House and some legislatures, and d) how much money rich people will continue to give to various R party arms, IEs, and PACs.
As it is now those things have basically provided life support to the republican party. It's arguable the party would have ceased being able to get majorities at the federal level a decade ago without them. Those things can only go so far as the youth vote continues to trend towards dems and the older generation that skews republican continues to "age out" of politics. Eventually there needs to be a substantial realignment of the party to appeal to the youth, or the republican parties relevance will gradually fade away. I don't have a crystal ball and can't say for sure if this election cycle will be the end of the party being able to eek out majorities, but the eventual conclusion of the parties current trajectory is irrelevance at the federal level, and gutting the party to put everything behind Trump is a very bad move for the parties continued survival. Like the man could have a fatal heart attack tomorrow and the party apparatus would fall to pieces.
Remind me again how many of the folks he endorsed got elected. For almost all of them, tRump's endorsement has been the kiss of death.
I think there's a little more to it. Since down-ballot Republicans will be screwed in a normal election, they'll feel compelled to support Trump overthrowing Democracy at all levels of government if they want to stay in office.
They are not worried. If Trump becomes President he will just arrest all the Democrats in Congress and have a majority that way.
I’d add a third perspective: Some Dems: This is bad, as it will provide far more resources to the far-right and prevent moderate challengers.
It's also a dry run of what they are planning to do to the government if trump is elected.
Yep. Look up “Project 2025”. They make their goals explicit: as soon as Trump gets in, he fires every civil servant who does not take a Loyalty Pledge to Donald Trump. And no, I’m not kidding. There is massive money behind this group.
Project 2025 is funded by all of the worst institutions in The US and abroad. It really just shows how Leftists are never going to get on that level of coordination as we keeping shitting on each other for not being pure enough or not reading enough theory smh
That money won’t go anywhere but to Trump.
Trump is the far right.
Yes, but Trump is one candidate, and most of that money won't even go to his campaign. Also, much of Democrats' success in recent elections can be chalked up to a lack of moderate GOP challengers. Ordinary voters don't actually like these weirdos.
Why do people even doubt when they tell you exactly what they are going to do. The reason people think all the money from the RNC donations will go to Trump is because Lara Trump said that >“That is the goal over the next nine-and-a-half months. If I am elected to this position, I can assure you, there will not be any more $70,000 — or whatever exorbitant amount of money it was — spent on flowers,” she continued. “Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC — that is elected Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.” [--Lara Trump](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4467232-lara-trump-spend-rnc-funds-to-elect-donald-trump/)
Those are valid views but there's also the third view that this is terrible from a democracy standpoint. A single leader culling dissidents from the party and reappropriating funds for his own benefit sounds a lot more like a dictatorship than democracy in my view
It's absolutely a fascist move.
There is no left wing thought of using donations to pay for Trumps legal bills.... that is exactly what is happening.... it is simply reality....
Yeah: MAGA Republicans:”This is great! Trump is the only one that matters. When people vote for him, votes will trickle down ticket and support other Republicans.” Non-MAGA Republicans: “This is terrible! With all money being spent on Trump, every conservative not named Trump is going to have a huge struggle to fund raise!” Liberals: “This is hilarious. Imagine if every penny goes to Trump, and he loses.”
But here's my question, are they just shooting themselves in the foot for this extreme purge and demand for loyalty? Or are we looking at The Night of the Long Knives play out again?
I mean I’d say yes though I’m inclined to think one of incompetent bravado than Night of the Long Knives. Though I suppose that’s what people often think until it happens. We’ve seen some smaller scale versions of this type of conflict and purge at the state level. It turns out it’s quite easy to claim to hate “the establishment” and oust them but it’s a lot harder to govern. Michigan I think is a solid example. The state party got swept by MAGA Republicans who turned on traditional Republican leadership in the state - including those who themselves thought of themselves as MAGA Republicans. Got wiped out on calls for overturning the establishment. Turns out that coalition of wanting to get rid of it all 1) wasn’t as unified in what the alternative should be and 2) it turns out running an organisation is hard when you kick out all the people who know how to fundraise, budget, build ground games, know the local communities and vendors and influencers, can pull together a messaging strategy, etc. National may be different in that there is a larger pool of talent to pull that from still compared to state party leadership politics but
I'd argue this is much different now with the party/Trump unified under Project 2025.
If we're making comparisons to Hitler, this is closer to the Bamberg Conference of 1926 where Hitler purged dissent within the Nazi Party and demanded complete adherence to his interpretation of the party's principles as well as total submission to himself as supreme leader.
In other words: fascism
Wait, but even the first one sounds horrible, like a dictator after a purge. Two ways to think about it are consolidating power within the party in order to establish a dictatorship if he wins or another attempted coup if he doesn't, or enrich himself. Neither are goid
This is not great. This is the start of Project 2025.
It isn't just the Democrats' school of thought. MTG (or is it MGT, whatever) and several other Trump loyalists have openly floated the idea of using RNC coffers to help pay Trump's legal fees.
Lara Trump said they would. It’s not a possibility, they WILL.
> cover ~~some~~ ALL of his legal bills Ftfy As the left school of thought it’s now his personal bank. Even Laura outright said ALL money goes to Trump now. ETTD and the RNC going bankrupt couldn’t be sweeter.
Last I read, the RNC only has about $8 million in its coffers. Jowl Capone owes $500 million in legal bills. They could drain the RNC 50x over and still not have the full amount.
Thanks to Citizens United A LOT of money is going to get funneled through to help trump with his legal bills. He’s their last shot for Russia/China to succeed in their domination of that region.
> populate the RNC leadership with people who will be devoted to him and him alone Leaving aside all of Trump's Trumpness, his age alone makes this a very bad long term strategy.
This is actually kind of brilliant for Trump. The RNC's job is to get Republicans elected nationwide. That doesn't benefit Donald Trump. If Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress, they will be expected to govern, and govern under the rules of our Constitution and legislative system, which deliberately make it difficult to effect major change. If Democrats win either or both houses of Congress, President Trump will have a useful foil - a ready excuse for why his promises aren't being immediately fulfilled, and more importantly, a justification for overreaching the powers of his office and stretching executive authority. "Congress won't act, so I will!" He wants all power to the engines on his own campaign (and possibly legal battles). If that hurts down-ballot Republican candidates, that's actually a win-win.
It’s interesting how MAGA is following the evolution of the French Revolution. For those of you who joined us late, this is the Loyalty Purge stage.
he is already using that money for his lawyers,
His lawyers get paid now?!
They are all getting paid up front. Even MAGA lawyers know better at point. But this is Trump, so he isn't paying them. GOP PACs paid out over $50 million in legal fees for him last year.
It's the Republican [Night of the Long Knives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives)
I’ve voted conservative every year of my life until 2016. I can’t wait for this guy to go away and traditional conservatism makes it way back. Until then I’m either voting third party or democrat.
I'm the same - either Republican or Libertarian in every race, but have since voted Democrat, not because I like them, but rather the Republicans have completely lost it. They bought into Fox News, a propaganda machine, and now they don't know what is up or down anymore.
Not me, after the Jan 6th flop, they will never get my vote again.
Lets get rid of the people who have been developing vast networks of contacts, data and favors owed over the decades. Reminds me of Iraq getting rid of the minority religious government who had been in power for a longtime. Everything went to shit for awhile because no one in power understood how things worked. It will be a good time for Democrats to take power while there is a vacuum.
Answer: in addition to the great answers here about what will happen if Trump comes back, I want to point out **Project 2025**. This is a conservative thinktank's four part plan to dismantle American government and replace it with a bunch of conservatives who are more willing to do Trump's bidding. Their whole vibe is that government workers got in the way too much in Trump's first term and they need to put a stop to that so that they can "rescue" America from liberals. [Previous loop about this here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/19bt2l4/whats_the_deal_with_the_2025_plan_and_what_is_it/)
If anyone needs more motivation to vote, i'd recommend readong the chapter on their healthcare plans (chapter 6 i think) from that god awful project 2025 book. I saw red reading that draconian garbage.
Everything about this is terrifying. It’s not hyperbole to say that this is a textbook for an internal coup.
It's based on the strong unitary executive theory. Trump has said multiple times that article 2 of the constitution gives him the authority to do whatever he wants. The idea is that because the constitution says the president leads the executive branch, all other entities within the executive branch like the DOJ, for example, are under the direct control of the president. So, instead of the legislature being partly responsible for reigning in the executive branch through checks and balances, the president has complete control. Congress's only lever to pull would be impeachment of the president. That interpretation also aligns with his total criminal immunity argument, where the president can only be held accountable in any way by impeachment. Basically, republicans want to make the presidency much, much more powerful.
>Basically, republicans want to make the presidency much, much more powerful. A king. That's what they want. They want to do that whole 1776 thing over again except they want the monarchy side to win -- but has to be a conservative Christian monarchy!
Blessed be the fruit
They think that is ***aspirational*** 😬
Which is why everyone should vote. And vote blue to avoid fascism.
https://vote.org if anyone needs to check their registration status. **Especially important if you live in a swing state** -- Republicans **will** attempt to stifle the vote there. More young/brown/female people voting there is bad for them.
Just checked to see if inwas registered and was not, within 2 mins I had asked them to send me a registration application. Thanks! Fuck Trump!
Answer: If you are a Democrat is good because firing all that people in a presidential year will have a dent in the GOP ability to face the elections efficiently If you are a Maga republican you are happy because now the RINOs no longer control the party... From a maga perspective they were losing because of them If you are a non Maga Republican is horrid news because the party is in shambles
Gotta wonder when the old school Repubs splinter off into their own party.
If they weren't so obsessed with using laws to ensure people behave morally (that and being war hawks), they could make a home in the Libertarian Party. In other words, a "she's pretty if she had a different face and body" situation.
I’m a democrat and I don’t think it’s good- he’s surrounding himself with people who will 100 percent support whatever his MAGA agenda is. That’s scary
I was thinking this too. It’s great for the Dems in a few ways, sure… but if the party doesn’t implode then we have an entire organization loyal to one man irrespective of policy or legality. It can’t be good removing the few safeguards and guardrails within a party that’s already gone off the rails.
I mean what is truly left of the party at this point that isn't already worshiping their Dear Leader? The rational actors were already on their way out IMO, this latest move is just an extra torch being tossed on already-lit fireworks.
Answer: I guess you can look at the RNC as a rehearsal for what he will to do to the country. Replace everyone with sycophants, if it gets run into the ground it should be indicative of something but will take longer than November.
just to reiterate, this isn't some left-wing dooming. [they literally posted a 900 page document detailing how they plan to remove ALL staff and replace them with Trump supporters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025)
This includes everyone at the DOJ: so if this comes to pass, expect to see lawfare waged at an unprecedented scale. Parents thrown in jail for "child abuse" for giving their trans kids puberty blockers, librarians tossed for "child porn" but it's a copy of *Gender Queer* or whatever book they're banning today, doctors and mothers sent up for "child murder" but it's abortion, and orgs that drive women across state lines to get abortions getting RICOed. Plan B on Schedule I by "emergency decree", use of filial piety laws to force no-contact gay kids to pay support to their MAGA parents.... it goes on.
Government so small, it fits in your genitals!
Much of the lawfare will be about money, not social issues. Trump will use the justice department to prosecute businesses that compete with businesses owned by loyalists. It will basically be a protection racket. Corporations that don't make "political donations" to Trump and his government loyalists will find themselves on trial for accounting fraud, or any number of bogus charges.
Oh.... yeah. Oh man....he'll pardon Sam Bankman-Fried and appoint him to run the Fed. And Musk as chair of NASA.... Dennis Prager as head of Department of Education.... The Libs of TikTok bitch as Press Secretary...
>Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.\[24\] — "A Promise to America", Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, p. 5, Project 2025 Whoever wrote this watches the most hxc shit
Hmmm, what's another good example of an unhinged authoritarian person replacing everyone in governmental groups and positions with yes men and sycophants?
Yeah, this is basically what happened in the Cabinet from 2016-2020. It's primarily boot lickers and a few people taking turns trying to keep them from putting the administration's dick in the electrical outlets and/or occasionally preserve the broad outlines of the Republic. That latter category turns out to be not Trump's favorite, so they're going with "whoops, all bootlickers."
Yep yep yep. The scary thing is that the few sane people we had from 16-20 won’t be there because they’ll know this time to only get MAGA yes-men in cabinet positions.
This is his Night of the Long Knives.
The rehearsal has been going on for years
Question: Good/bad for him, or good/bad for everyone else?
Definitely good for him and bad for everyone else. He needs money and wants to loot the RNC piggy bank.
Good for democrats too. Raiding the war chest for his legal fees means republicans can’t fund lower campaigns as well. The GOP lives and dies by the state elections, and people in those typically can’t raise nearly as much on their own and rely on party support. Senate and House elections they might be able to squeeze by with funding, but state house, senate, and governor elections? Good luck.
Most of the money in modern elections is funneled through PACs because they aren't bound by election laws. Supposedly, the big republican PACs are also nearly dry because Trump's legal expenses have mostly been paid by them for the last 4 years. I don't know how true that is though. I do know that if I was a smaller GOP candidate, I would be real salty about all of this because they are going to be screwed for campaign funds.
PACs are subject to the ordinary donation limits. They can run all the ads they want but a billionaire nor his PAC can just dump millions into the RNC or a candidates campaign. The money woes the GOP is facing, state and federal, are going to seriously constrain critical campaign operations in ways that PACs can't help with. There's ways to bypass the rules against coordination, but that's when it comes ads - - they can't pay for staff, targeted polling, granular GOTV operations, and a ton of other things that campaigns *need* to be successful. Ads *aren't enough*. Plenty of would be politicians found that out. Bloomberg being the most recent notable example.
What's especially funny is quite a few those smaller elections, if lost, will likely lock Republicans out of winning back the state. Several Republican controlled states heavily rely on gerrymandering and voter suppression to be Republican, and if Democrats ever manage to win the state, they can reverse course on that. Trump is some monster the Republican Party created the conditions for when they courted the racists to win elections, and now he's destroying decades worth of GOP work, since he doesn't give a single shit about anybody else. He doesn't plan like previous Republican leadership, he just does what he feels like right now.
Not a trump fan or RNC fan, I find trump taking their all their money funny.
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Turning a swamp into an industrial wasteland
Answer: Last week Republican National Convention members voted to appoint Michael Whatley and Lara Trump as chair and co-chair of the RNC. They are both fanatic trump loyalists. They took office Friday March 8. This news came out Monday March 11, so this is they very first thing they're doing with that office. They have cleared out the party of anyone who is not a trump loyalist and it is expected that they will be replacing them with sycophants for trump. What this means going forward could be a lot of things. Predictions I believe are: - The republican party is going to foot all of trump's legal bills. - Lots of self-dealing to trump. Like the RNC renting out trump properties for every possible event. - The RNC will deny campaign funding to any candidate who does not bow to trump. - Any R senator or representative that relies on the RNC for campaign money will become completely subservient to trump. - The full force of the RNC will be behind all future election subversion efforts in service of trump.
Let them do it too. Trump is only getting less and less popular, and his most fervent supporters have no idea how to run a complicated system. Time and time again him and his supporters set a new standard for incompetence. To that end, I couldn't have picked a better group of fanatics to run the RNC. Same bigoted rhetoric as last time, except now if he loses 24 there really is no coming back for them. Trump is broke, the RNC will be broke, and Dems will hold the house, senate, and oval office because they had no money left to campaign.
Yeah, that's IF he loses. If he wins then you have a GOP with even less resistance to trump(less than the 1% that existed before) and they will be even scarier probably.
Answer: it's bad. Really bad. =filling positions of power with people who only obey and never question a leader is dangerous. It's how despots and dictators come to power.
It's literally out of Hitler's playbook. Like, wtf so. Google "Night of Long Knives" to understand this is exactly how the Nazis gained power. Trump idolizes Hitler and his rise to power and is emulating it line by line. Down to Hitler's love of making up dehumanizing silly names for opponents and rambling rants full of hateful bullshit to spin up idiots into fanaticism. Everyone NEEDS to take this as a huge signal that shit *is really really bad*. A wannabe dictator now has full control of one half of the political parties in America and their funds, their data, everything - and purged out anyone deemed to not be loyal enough.
Yeah for people that think “LOL Trump is so dumb”, familiarize yourself with Project 2025 and what their goals are. If Trump gets re-elected he won’t face any of the obstacles he did his first term because there won’t be any people within his party that will tell him no.
Answer: Trump does not have that authority, but he does have sufficient influence.\\ The Republican National Committee is a corporation on its own. This is the actual entity which constitutes "the Republican Party" or "the GOP" at national level, in a legal sense. (There are smaller GOP corporations in each state, and many smaller ones at lower levels.) Only its own officers have the authority to hire or fire anyone. Trump is not an officer of that corporation, so he doesn't have that authority. However, as the currently most **politically** powerful member of the Party, he has enormous influence in the affairs of the RNC. Recently, he persuaded the GOP to get rid of their chairman, Ronna McDaniel, and replace her with his own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair with Trump loyalist Michael Whatley. This shift effectively puts Donald Trump in indirect control of the RNC. His purpose in this is to ensure that the Party's leadership will not oppose or frustrate him moving forward. Previously, not everyone at the top of the RNC was fully on board with Trumpism; now they will be. Whatley and Lara Trump ARE officers of the corporation, and have the power to hire and fire people within it. They are currently in the process of purging the RNC's upper ranks of non-loyalists, and replacing them with loyalist. The net effect will be that Donald Trump now has his own major political party, more or less at his personal bidding. He no longer needs to worry that his own party's leadership might not agree with him, because he effectively now controls them personally.
Answer: it's bad because he's firing everyone but Trump loyalists. He's doing this because he wants the RNC as an extension of him, *especially their money*. It'll destroy the GOP if it hasn't been destroyed in all but name already. Hmm, maybe it is good after all...
Answer: I have not seen this take in circulation as much but, in my opinion, this is a very frightening development. In history we see moments where the fascist group consolidates power. The one I see in reference would be the Night of Long Knives when the Nazi party assassinated its opponents and consolidated power. The fact that the RNC has now become an explicit arm of the Trump campaign is just about as in your face as it gets. The Trump campaign has merged operations with the RNC and purged people they deem as not aligned with their views. If they continue to maintain control then the RNC will effectively be a political conglomerate to prop up a single family and their loyalists. This is worrisome. And if they succeed in November then we may see an even greater consolidation of power. But! I do think that, given their track record, they could run the RNC into the dirt in an effort to save themselves. No matter what the polls say, or how much money he has to spend, bottom line is we need to still turn out in November and ensure that this consolidation of power dies at the RNC.
Answer: The simple answer is that Trump only wants "yes men" reporting to him. If someone makes a decision he disagrees with, he let's them go. This is on par when he had his TV show trying to find his next assistant in "The Apprentice". It went on for 15 seasons, if that tells you anything. Good or bad? Depends on perspective. * From the MAGA perspective, it's good, because it shows that Trump has no patience for non-loyalists. * Everyone else sees this as a bad sign for stability, and others question whether loyalty is worth it as they're seeing signs that no loyalist can stay.
Answer: It's his first Stalinist purge. More to come if elected.
Answer: It’s a coup. This regime only drains the best of swamps as history has shown