Former President Donald Trump said that there will “probably be some changes made” to Republican National Committee (RNC) leadership if he has anything to say about it.
President Trump made the comments during an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that aired on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Feb. 4.
During the interview, Ms. Bartiromo referenced the RNC’s precarious fundraising position.
Trump Comments on RNC
Ms. Bartiromo asked President Trump about that.“The RNC doesn’t seem so strong,” Ms. Bartiromo said. “I mean, the Democrats have all the money.”
President Trump dismissed the relevance of this to his own White House aspirations, quipping, “I have a lot of money.”
“People are not looking at the RNC,” President Trump said. “They want changes. You have to understand, I have nothing to do with the RNC.”
President Trump was then asked his perspective on Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the RNC.
President Trump replied, “I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me,” citing Ms. McDaniel’s former role as head of the Michigan Republican Party from 2015 to 2017.
He added, “I think she did okay initially in the RNC. I would say right now, there’ll probably be some changes made.”
The comments come as the 2024 election is getting well and truly underway.
President Trump is seen as all but the presumptive Republican nominee by observers after back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Ms. McDaniel said as much following President Trump’s blowout double-digit win over former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, opining that President Trump was effectively the Republican nominee.
On Feb. 3, President Joe Biden also easily glided to victory in his own party’s primary in South Carolina, where he won around 96 percent of his party’s vote with no serious challengers.
With this in mind, most observers consider the primary season effectively over, with the general election season now set to start months earlier than normal.
That means that both parties will start to consolidate around their candidate in the hope of reclaiming or defending the White House.
But ActBlue, the Democrats’ fundraising arm, is currently raising substantially more than WinRed, the Republicans’ fundraising arm.
The RNC, according to its year-end filing, brought in about $87.2 million in total federal receipts. That’s a sharp drop from the about $241.1 million it raised in 2019, the last year preceding a general election. Moreover, it’s significantly lower than the $176 million it raised in 2022.
ActBlue, meanwhile, has brought in a windfall by comparison.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) reported it raised $119.9 million in total federal receipts in 2023. It also held $21 million on hand and was debt-free.
With both parties starting to consolidate around their presidential champions, fundraising is going to become increasingly important in a race whose outcome will come down to outspending each other in just around seven swing states.
