CHARLESTON, S.C. — With Ronna McDaniel announcing her resignation today, Donald Trump is moving full steam ahead with a full takeover of the Republican National Committee (RNC), including turning the RNC into his personal legal defense fund, or as Nikki Haley said today: "Donald Trump is now turning the Republican Party into his own playpen."
Over the weekend, news broke that the RNC is considering two resolutions—one to affirm the RNC's neutrality in the ongoing primary fight and one to block the party from paying any presidential candidate's legal bills. Right on cue, the Trump campaign threw a temper tantrum.
Donald Trump has already spent $58 million of campaign donations on legal fees and the RNC paid Trump's legal fees in 2021 and 2022. With his mounting legal expenses and lackluster fundraising, Trump is desperate to turn the RNC into his personal ATM.
Under Donald Trump and current RNC leadership, Republicans lost elections in 2018, 2020, and 2022, and now the RNC is effectively bankrupt. Amidst major backlash, Trump was also forced to walk back a resolution last month that would've declared him the "presumptive nominee."
"For seven years, Trump and his cronies have been rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, driving the Republican Party toward one loss after another," said Haley national spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas. "Now, Trump is determined to steer the GOP ship straight into an iceberg with his insistence on making the RNC all about him and his legal bills."
Nikki Haley, Haley Campaign Press Release - Donald Trump's Titanic Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/370246