RNC's Election Denial Litmus Test Foreshadows 2nd Trump Admin Of Loyalists
The RNC is asking new hires if they believe the 2020 election was stolen. They're screening employees for an authoritarian mindset in the same way Trump and his allies plan to do in a second admin.
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This month, Donald Trump completed his takeover of the Republican National Committee (RNC), installing Trump ally Michael Whatley as Chair and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair.
The new leadership team immediately purged over 60 RNC staffers and is actively seeking to replace them with Trump loyalists in an overhaul they reportedly describe as cutting “bureaucracy.” Sound familiar?
This is the exact same approach outlined for a potential second Trump term in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and Donald Trump’s Agenda 47.
As I’ve written about extensively, Donald Trump plans to implement Schedule F, an executive order that reclassifies tens of thousands of federal workers as “at-will” employees, making them easier to fire for no cause. The plan, as outlined by Trump and Project 2025, is to immediately purge and replace as many as 54,000 civil servants with Republican loyalists. Project 2025 has already begun screening, training, and creating a database of thousands of GOP loyalists, so they’ll be ready on day one to begin implementing Trump’s extremist agenda.
What the RNC is doing right now foreshadows what we can expect from a second Trump term. The RNC seeking loyalists isn’t surprising, but the way in which they’re fielding these prospective Trump loyalists showcases the authoritarian mindset they’re demanding of their employees. There’s no doubt Trump will demand the same from his administration. They want loyalty to Trump above loyalty to country.
Applicatiants to the RNC are being asked this question: “Was the 2020 presidential election stolen?”
The revelation of this election denial litmus test was initially reported by The Washington Post, and corroborated by The New York Times, CNN, and multiple other news outlets this week. Here’s reporting from CNN:
“Over the past few weeks, Trump advisers have asked those seeking employment at the RNC about their views of fraud during the 2020 election, with the question serving as an apparent litmus test for hiring, the sources said.
Use of the question comes after the Trump campaign has effectively merged its operations with the RNC.”
The use of this election denial question was later confirmed by the RNC.
If the RNC is demanding that their employees believe the election was stolen, it’s likely we can expect the same from a second Trump administration.
Trump has spoken extensively about purging what he calls “the deep state,” which is really just career civil servants who keep basic, non-partisan government services running. Replacing these civil servants with extremist election deniers will significantly erode the effectiveness of our government services and threaten our democracy.
Imagine a reality where, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump had tens of thousands of federal workers installed who were ride-or-die MAGA and went along with his 2020 election lies. Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election failed in part because so many of his top officials and rank-and-file federal employees refused to go along with it. If Trump wins re-election and installs these loyalists, he will have far more tools at his disposal to erode democracy.
There’s another concerning development at the RNC that provides warnings for a second Trump term.
The new RNC fundraising agreement with the Trump Campaign allows for money to be siphoned into his Save America PAC, which covers his legal bills. The Associated Press broke the story last week:
“Donald Trump’s new joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs donations to his campaign and a political action committee that pays the former president’s legal bills before the RNC gets a cut, according to a fundraising invitation obtained by The Associated Press.
The unorthodox diversion of funds to the Save America PAC makes it more likely that Republican donors could see their money go to Trump’s lawyers…”
Donald Trump has been grifting donations from his base and funneling them toward his legal bills for years now. Since Trump left office in 2021, Trump has spent over $100 million on legal bills, amounting to $90k a day, none of which has been paid with his own money, according to an analysis by The New York Times published this week. Trump has relied entirely on donations from his supporters being directed into PACs backing him, like the Save America PAC.
Now, Trump is seeking to use the RNC to further cover his mounting legal bills. Trump loves to transform institutions into vessels for his benefit. This is what he’ll do with the federal government if he wins re-election.
A second Trump admin will not only fill this administration with sycophants, but it’ll once again serve as a piggy bank for Trump himself. Trump’s first term was bad enough. It was a walking constitutional Emoluments Clause violation, with foreign governments seeking to fill Trump’s pockets to garner favorable treatment, no matter the foreign policy implications.
We can expect this same cronyism in a second Trump term but ramped up to the next level. We can surely expect foreign governments to buy shares in Trump’s new Truth Social stock in an effort to cozy up to Trump. We can also expect Trump and his administration of loyalists to issue government contracts to businesses with ties to Trump and his allies.
Twisting the United States government into one man’s dishonest image will do nothing to help the average American. In fact, it will actively harm our freedoms and could irreparably tarnish our system of government as we know it.
Americans should watch these developments closely, perceive what they indicate about a potential second Trump term, and vote accordingly.