A new book reports that former President Donald Trump threatened to expel the head of Republican National Committee (RNC), following false claims of fraud in 2020’s election by some of its members.
A book written by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, titled “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” details the last days of the Trump administration, including Trump’s conversation with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, which took place on January 20 during his final Air Force One flight as president.
McDaniel called to wish Trump farewell. But Trump was “in no mood for small talk or nostalgic goodbyes,” Karl wrote. Instead, Trump “got right to the point. He told her he was leaving the Republican Party and would be creating his own political party.”
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, was also on the call with McDaniel, Karl said in his book:
Trump’s younger brother had been constantly vilifying the RNC for not being loyal enough to Trump. In fact, at the January 6 rally before the Capitol Riot, the younger Trump all but declared that the old Republican Party didn’t exist anymore.
Trump explained he was leaving the party becauseNot enough Republicans agreed with his claim that his loss to Joe Biden as President was due to election fraud.
“You cannot do that. If you do, we will lose forever,” McDaniel reportedly said to him in response.
“Exactly. You lose forever without me,” Trump retorted. “I don’t care.”
In the days following Trump’s conversation with McDaniel, RNC leadership reminded him that he still depended on them for a number of resources.
The RNC noted that they would be an enormous asset to his potential election run in 2024 and threatened not to pay legal fees relating to Trump’s election challenges if he left the party. They also stated that they would withhold data, including email addresses for tens of thousands of people.
Five days after his talk with McDaniel, Trump reversed course and said he’d stick with the GOP after all, Karl’s book details.
A Trump departure could have been catastrophic. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in OctoberIt was shown that the former president still has significant support from Republican-leaning voters.
When asked whether Trump should run for the presidency again, 78 percent of GOP voters responded that they wanted him to, compared with just 16 percent who said no.
But when the question was posed to all voters participating in the poll, not just Republican-leaning ones, the general consensus was that voters didn’t want Trump to run again. Just 35 percent of all respondents said they’d like him to run for president in 2024, while nearly 6 in 10 respondents, or 58 percent, said they didn’t want him to.
