The Daily - ‘The Run-Up’: The Republican Party Sorts Through Its Mess

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

The Times reporter Astead W. Herndon and the team are back for a new season of “The Run-Up” and they’re looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, which in many ways has already begun. In this first episode, Astead heads to California for the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting to explore the tangled lines and scrambled allegiances that animated the effort to unseat Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the R.N.C.

Hey, it's Michael. Today, we're sharing the first episode of the new season of our politics show, The Run-Up. If you listened to the first season, which ran here on the Daily, you'll remember that it told the story of the lead-up to the midterms, how we got to that moment where Americans on both sides of the aisle were feeling so hopeless and where the stakes of the election seemed to be democracy itself. A lot of that story was about the grassroots and their disconnect with the establishment, a story many years in the making. This year, the run-up is turning its attention to the other side, to the establishment, the party insiders. And that's

because this is a very particular moment in American politics. The midterms seemed to send a very clear message that voters were rejecting extremism and election denialism, and really, Donald Trump himself. So how, in the aftermath of those results, would the parties move forward, especially with Trump seeking re-election and an indictment looming? How would they try to position themselves and what would they try to do in these months when no one is really paying attention? That's where the run-up picks back up this season, and the story starts inside the Republican Party. Take a listen. Hey. You made it.

Let's do this. Hi, friends. How are you doing? Should we hit the road? Yeah, let's do it. How are you doing? Should we hit the road? Yeah, let's do it.

So back in January, I flew out to Dana Point, California, and met up with my colleagues, Caitlin O'Keefe and Luke Vanderplug. We're headed to the Waldorf Astoria that is the host hotel for the Republican National Committee's winter meeting. And that's basically where the leadership of the inside of the Republican Party will hear out the candidates and then make a selection for the next RNC chair. And that's all happening at this very bougie, very exclusive, very expensive hotel in Orange County. And that's where we're headed. Right. Like minimum $900 a night.

Like minimum. The meeting we were here for is not a highly publicized event. In fact, its members would rather the media not show up at all. But it seemed like the place to go. It's the first Republican meeting of the year. And I think what we're trying to do here is figure out how honestly are Republicans reckoning with their midterms losses. Because while the committee had a clear agenda for the week, they're debating about whether a new chair is necessary for the party to move forward in a positive direction.

It all felt tied up in this much larger story about the party and the fractures that have formed after the midterms. After targeting Kevin McCarthy in the speaker fight, the grassroots had now turned on the RNC chair, Ronna Romney McDaniel. She's the niece of Mitt Romney, though she rarely uses the Romney name these days. And if she were to win, she'd become one of the longest-serving chairs in Republican Party history. But for weeks leading up to the vote, members of the Trump wing had been working to block that. And using right-wing media to promote her challenger, another RNC member, Harmeet Dhillon. Dhillon is a prominent conservative lawyer who'd helped Donald Trump with his election fraud claims.

Interestingly, Trump himself had publicly stayed out of the race. He'd handpicked McDaniel for the chair seat back in 2016. And according to some reports, he was quietly still supporting her. Like the party as a whole in this moment, it was a mess of tangled lines and scrambled allegiances. And GOP officials were talking about the upcoming chair vote as the first step toward unity. Right, right, right, right, right. So this is sort of like potentially one moment of reckoning for the party that we're here to be sort of witness to.

Yeah, I think Republicans are going to have a bunch of moments of reckoning. I think we're here not only to bear witness to another one, but really to kind of gauge what we can learn by how it shakes out. From the New York Times, I'm Astead Herndon. This is The Run-Up. So where, before we go in, where are we right, right now? Like, what is this? What is the thing we're doing? We have transitioned from the stoplight to a residence inn. So the RNC's winter meeting is a three-day event. And on day one, before heading to the Waldorf for the main meeting, we stop by another hotel down the road.

And this is where the conservative radio host, John Fredericks, is hosting a forum. Where conservative media was putting on a candidate forum for the chair fight. It was being broadcast on John Fredericks' radio show, on Steve Bannon's show, War Room, and on Far Right TV. It's like we have a commercial break. Can you just real quick describe the table, who's sitting at it, who's not sitting at it? On the left, you have an empty seat for Ronna McDaniel, who's the RNC chair. They're trying to make sure they show that she has chosen not to come.

You have the surrogate for Harmeet Dhillon's challenging campaign. You have Mike Lindell, see that there, who is the Trump supporter and MyPillow CEO. You can learn a lot by just looking at this table. For one, McDaniel is not there. Event organizers say they invited her. She says they never did. Dylan has sent a spokesperson. The only one who's actually there is the third candidate,

the long-shot, far-right figure, Mike Lindell. But the room is packed. Yeah, it's like sort of a conference room in a hotel. It's people standing in the side, standing in the back. I'm seeing a lot of, like, American flags. It's like an American flag cowboy hat. Oh, here we go again. The forum is set up as a debate. And the main focus is why the party keeps losing. The last two years, the biggest thing that we needed was a fair playing field.

We need our election platforms fixed, bar none. Whether it's machines being gone, whether it's voter rolls being cleaned. But there are a lot of moments. This is something that Harmeet is very, very passionate about. She's been an election integrity lawyer for some time now, too. I will say one of the things when Harmeet wins is the first thing she'd like to do

is bring Mike Lundell on board to help us sort out what is going on with the industry. When they're mostly just agreeing with each other. What did Ronald McDaniel do to fix any of it? We just went into the 2020 election and Ron is on TV saying we had bad candidates and it's Herschel Walker's fault. Those aren't bad candidates. It is not real elections. We have to recognize that.

The midterms aren't Donald Trump's fault. We've lost three cycles in a row, and you don't just get to fail upwards. If you owned a football team and you lost three seasons in a row, you would either fire the head coach or at minimum you'd trade some players. Right now we're doing neither. We're not trading players. We have the same head coach and we're expecting a different result, and that's the definition of insanity.

The midterms were McDaniel's fault, and she has to go. What's your setup? Okay, folks, we have run out of time, so we're going to do the closing statement. I'm recording with The Times. I know you've been talking to our producer, Caitlin. Caitlin, yes. Not me. I'm Luke. Caitlin, yes. Not me.

I'm Luke. Caitlin's still here. After the forum, Luke and I went to the hotel lobby to catch up with John Fredericks. Actually, can you just say your name and where you... Yeah. John Fredericks, radio and TV at JF Radio. Or, as he often refers to himself on his radio show... You should say the Godzilla of truth. This is the time to say it. John Fredericks, should say the Godzilla of truth. This is the time to say it.

John Fredericks, I am the Godzilla of truth in America. You can follow me at JFRadioShow. The Godzilla of truth. He's hosting this forum as a way to draw grassroots attention to the RNC and their process for electing the party chair.

What we're doing is we're bringing transparency back so that our base understands how this works. See, before we started doing this, they had no idea. They had no idea even who these 168 people were. If you look at the

level of corruption that goes on here, they won't let the media in until Friday. You can't even get credentials until Friday. You can't even go down the hallway without that Gestapo there, right? Then they hold it at a resort where nobody can get to. You go to breakfast. I've been there two days. I had two breakfasts with my wife, both of them 120 bucks. Who can afford that, right? You can't afford it. And so they hold it there so that the very grassroots that they say they want to engage can have no say, no part, no even ability to watch anything because they can't get there. Then what's even worse than that, the speakers at the event are all RONDA supporters. The speaker at Thursday's dinner is Kellyanne Conway, who

the RNC paid $800,000 to her in consulting fees. I mean, it is just one big awash in grift is what you've got going on. They don't want any transparency. Why do you think they're doing that? Because she has no record to run on. She's lost five consecutive elections if you take the two Georgia runoffs. I guess a question I have is how are those five elections her fault, but they're not Donald Trump's fault? Why does she get blamed for those elections? She's the chairman of the RNC. If you want to blame Trump, don't vote for him in the upcoming primaries. That's your choice. You can do that, right? There's going to be challenges and you can vote for him in the upcoming primaries. That's your choice. You can do that, right? There's going to be challenges, and you can vote for someone else if you think he's the reason, right?

I happen to not think he is. But she is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. She's done nothing on ballot harvesting. She hasn't done anything in any of the critical areas. She's independent of how you vote. Independent of how you vote. She has, we need someone. Look, this is a movement. America

first is a movement of working people that want their jobs back. They want to take care of their families. They don't want the kids groomed in school. They don't want to compete with low wage immigrants for jobs, right? They want to stay out of these wars. They don't want to be sending tanks at, you know, hundreds of millions of their money to Ukraine. They want to stay out of these wars. They don't want to be sending tanks at, you know, hundreds of millions of their money to Ukraine. They want to live their life and make a better wage. And then it's we're trying to take over the Republican Party because what it represents right now is the Mitt Romney elites. Right. We go to the infield of NASCAR and grill hot dogs and Mitt Romney goes to the box of the owner of the Jets, right? That's the disconnect. And they're still in that world. They don't get it.

And eventually we're going to take over the Republican Party as a vehicle, right? As a vehicle for our movement. How do you expect, where do you expect that kind of energy to go? Is it just waiting for the primary? Is it to back to Trump's campaign? I don't think so. No, this is about bigger stuff than that. People have changed. The movement has eclipsed all of its current leaders.

Including Donald Trump. It's eclipsed them all. Trump is now one of the leaders. He was the leader. Now the president is a key leader, right? This is not defined anymore by its leaders. That's the most important thing to realize. And the movement itself is becoming the it. When do you think that shifted?

I think it shifted during McCarthy. I mean, look, I'm sure that I'm going to be playing a role in the campaign. I'm for Trump, no question. You know, his surrogates are here, all friends of mine, lobbying behind the scenes for Rana. That's fine. They got a right to do that. But they can't control the grassroots. We have gotten so many people involved in the party at the local level. It's over. And what we saw here today is you got 100 people came. All I did was announce it on my radio and TV show. And they just drove here.

Why? Because we got them involved and they're cut out of the process. And they want in. They want to know what's going on. They want transparency. Right. They're crowding us out. We have been like, we want to get back. So before we've even gotten to the RNC meeting, here's what we've learned. For grassroots conservatives, the midterms were not a rejection of their movement. My name is Caitlin. I'm with the New York Times. And I was just, do you have a couple minutes to chat? I'm just curious what brought people here. I'm Sunny Schmidt. I live here in Dana Point. And I just found out about this this morning. And so, I mean, Ronald McDaniel is just ruining the party.

So we definitely need a fighter for the people. That's why I'm here. The election was still stolen, and the establishment is still to blame. I've been watching. I've never paid much attention to politics, period, until 2016, frankly. And now I almost listen to it, watch it nonstop, because it matters, and we matter, and the country is going straight to hell if we don't take over. I mean, the RNC's done a terrible job, and it's because of leadership. And if either one of these other folks get in, we win. And if they team up, all the better. Harmeet and Mike are both grassroots.

They're for the people, not for the machine. I'm curious about your feelings about President Trump. Do you want him to get another term? And while many of them still love Trump, here's what feels new. I'm increasingly hearing the grassroots remind us of an important fact. And anybody who's for America, I don't care if it's Trump, anybody. America first. Candidates. Their movement predates Trump.

Predates any one leader. Very different from my comrades. OK, I'm not a Trump fan. And some of them are even saying. We want, I want DeSantis. DeSantis is very, very shrewd and he's common sense and he knows how to get things done. He also knows how to work with media. They're willing to move on without him.

This feels big. It's something we really haven't seen in the past six years. Good point. But I still disagree. I still like Trump. I'm willing to hear other viewpoints. And I still love you. Thank you. I still love you too.

Hi. Hello. Hi. Hello. You figured out the shift a lot faster than that, the gear shift. That thing, oh my God. So the next day, we head to the Waldorf Astoria. It's day two. We're about to go talk to some establishment people. Can you sort of contrast what we heard yesterday with

what you think we will hear at this event? Yesterday was a group of outsiders. You know, John Frederick is hosting that event at a hotel that's near the event, but not at the host site. He is hosting a group for the public. And these are people who are used to pressuring the establishment in ways that are uncomfortable. Today, I think we'll hear from the people who make the decisions, but also the folks who are trying to toggle the line between the Republican Party's kind of elite donors, Republican Party's most important political figures, and the grassroots. So whereas yesterday is all about what they believe in and what they think is right, today is going to be about people who are trying to think of just what's best for the Republican Party. And I think that's a difference in how those two groups think. Yeah, totally.

Honestly, Frederick's is right. The RNC is exclusive. 168 voting members decide on a secret ballot who gets to be party chair. And it's this sort of thing that the grassroots hates. And here we are. As we're entering the hotel, security guards won't let us bring in our microphones, so we have to record on our phones. And just inside the front doors, we see some RNC members in the lounge, taking a break

from their closed-door meetings. Can you just identify yourself on tape, just so that we have you saying your name and what you do, where you're from? Yeah, and my social security number. Just the last four digits. Yeah, the last four digits. My name is Oscar Brock. I'm from Chattanooga, Tennessee. My blood type is 8. And what's your title? I'm National Committee Man from Tennessee.

We find Oscar Brock near the bar. Like a lot of RNC members, he's kind of a political lifer. No, I was raised in politics. I came from a political family. My dad ran for Congress when I was in the womb. I was born about a month after he won his first race. And so, you know, I lived my life on jet airplanes and traveling to and from D.C. From conversations we had before arriving, we know a lot of these folks are hesitant to talk to media

about who they're supporting in the chair race. But Brock is a big exception to that. He'd come onto our radar because of an email he sent to other RNC members saying it was time to ditch Ronna McDaniel. One thing I was talking to someone yesterday about was they didn't expect McDaniel to run again in 2020. I didn't. In fact, I talked to staff members and I said,

what are you going to be doing next year? And they said, what do you mean? We're running again. And I'm like, why in the world were you running again? Can you tell me why were you surprised? So, one, we'd lost two cycles in a row, right? Now, whether or not you can blame Rana or you need to blame someone else becomes irrelevant.

You look for a new head coach, right? So Brock's using the same line as some of McDaniel's grassroots critics. Replace the losing coach. But he's coming at it as a party insider. Why wasn't there any energy around that? Why weren't there more people like you who were saying that two years ago? That's a good question. A lot of people have been asking me that question.

In Tennessee, we call it a give-it-am. There's just no give-it-am left. I guess I keep asking why, but why is there no give-it-am left? For a number of us on the 168, this is the coolest thing we've ever done, is to serve in this body. And the last thing we want to do is come up here and make waves. I'm just not that way. And you're saying so that lends itself to just allowing the ship to continue course.

Yeah, I think that's right. This is about just making sure I still get to come back to the Waldorf Astoria and Dana Point next year, right? And for a lot of people, changing chair would mean that wouldn't be true. No, we're not going to stay at the Waldorf Astoria of Harmeet's chair. We'll be at the Marriott down the road. Where we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brock's joking around.

But this thing he's talking about, the party's fear of making waves, for him, it's bigger than the chair fight. And the ultimate example of it is the party's relationship with Donald Trump. Are you familiar with the parable of the boiled frog? I believe so, but I wouldn't need a reminder. Okay, give it to us.

So you can put a frog in boiling water and it'll jump out, right? But if you put a frog in a pot of water and then turn up the heat, he'll eventually cook to death without jumping out, right? So we became that frog. We have heard a number of people kind of go through Trump tiptoeing, even yesterday. Of course. Right. Because he can crush you, you know?

I mean, he did it to people way more powerful than me. You know, Bob Cork or Jeff Flake. I mean, he just crushed him with his thumb. You're saying that is on folks' minds? Sure. If you were to hold a straw poll of the committee, how many do you think want Donald Trump to be the next president of the 168? Maybe a third.

Maybe. Maybe less. What percentage of the people who don't want Donald Trump would say that out loud? None. That's how it feels. And so for Brock, getting rid of McDaniel is critical to the party showing it's ready to move forward. But there was something I still didn't totally understand. I saw the email that you had sent out about the time to move on from McDaniel and from Trump.

I sent it to 22 people. Why does everybody have this email? Journalists, you know? We would be bad at our jobs if that wasn't true. So I was reaching out to the Never Trumpers. And my point was that certain people, and I don't know who, but I had heard the case made that Harmeet was closer to Trump than Ronna. And that just was patently untrue, right? Trump made Ronna's career. And that's not a secret.

Ronna would probably admit it today if she was sitting right here. Six and a half, seven years ago, Ronna was an RNC member for Michigan. And then Donald Trump appoints her as or nominates her as chairman of the RNC. That's a gig. Would you take it? The funny thing about this chair fight is that on paper, McDaniel and Dillon look kind of similar. They're both RNC members. They both have ties to Trump World. And so it might seem confusing why Brock would see Dillon as a solution to the RNC's Trump problem,

especially given the fact that his support for her puts him in a camp with people like John Fredericks. Even amongst our supporters, we have the really crazy January 6th was a great day in American history kind of people. And we have the, you know, January 6th was truly an insurrection people on the team. I mean, we've got the whole gamut. We've got one lady who helped organize the Stop the Steal rally on January 6th. She didn't go to the Capitol, but you know. So we've got the whole gamut. And I use the analogy of strange bedfellows. And someone asked me, what about Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson? I said, we're rooting for the same team. That doesn't make us teammates.

But I mean, in some ways, they've been leading the team. Well, and I'm grateful for their help. Do you worry about... Yes. Ha! Do you worry about Harmeet's ability? Like, if you want the party to move away from this sort of extremist wing,

but also some of those people are the people backing Harmeet. Are you worried about whether that will undermine her ability to lead the party in the direction you want it to? Right. And just to point it out, at that event, her surrogate said, you know, we're going to win. Harmeet's going to win. And Mike Lindell's going to be right by her side. You know, the guy who, the only thing he had to say yesterday was that the election was fake and there was nothing else to learn from, you know?

Mike Lindell will not have an office on the fourth floor of the RNC building on First Street. Do you think if Harmeet does, she's going to be beholden to some of those folks in any way, though? Like the Charlie Kirks or the Kari Lakes. Or even—go ahead.

I know she'll be grateful, too, certainly to Kari Lake. Charlie, if you're listening, you're an asshole. Brock won't fully engage this, but the best that I can understand it is that he thinks McDaniel, as a Trump appointee, is uniquely incapable of running a truly fair and open primary. If you think there's one side who's going to tilt the table in favor of the former president, it's not Harmeet. Brock understands the hold Trump continues to have on the RNC. But he's hopeful that some key things have changed in recent months.

Namely, Trump's grassroots support. He estimates that Trump used to influence around 34% of primary voters. How did the midterm shift in Ectain? It was, you know, another nail in the coffin. We dramatically underperformed, both in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. And I think everybody went, oh my gosh, this is, and our candidate quality was way below what we've come

to expect over the long run. Here's the thing, though, is like, those candidates won primaries, right? Like, it's not like those candidates were just hand-selected by Donald Trump. They were definitely endorsed. No, they were totally hand-selected. They were hand selected. But that 34% of the Republican primary voters that he influences made that happen. Whether it was J.D. Vance who ended up being a decent candidate or Dr. Haas

who ended up being a terrible candidate. Or Herschel Walker. Well, God bless him. And so I'm saying like is it the Trump problem or is it that 34%? How do you separate them? Do you think that number's still that same? No, it's a little bit lower. It's a little bit lower?

Yeah. I'm guessing it's in the high 20s or maybe 30, maybe 30%. That he still truly influences, you know? What's going on here is a conversation happening all over the Republican Party, a kind of high stakes guessing game about how much of Trump's base remains. Because in a primary election, a difference of just a couple percentage points matters. How do you ensure that that 34, maybe slightly less percent of the Republican primary voter base is not the driving factor of the next presidential primary. Well, we have to sell, right?

We have to get out there and convince them that there's a better way. And we've got to get past this post-truth world of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, right? You've got to get past that. You know, the Matt Gaetzes, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, the Lauren Boebertes, who's the jerk in New York, George Santos, you know, I mean, these guys are going to exist. Our question is, if we can keep them off of CNN, off of Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News, right,

then I think we're okay. It's when they say the most absurd things and they make the headline of ABC News that it kills us, right? And you're saying you are confident in that? I'm confident we can make the case that we can do better. I mean, hey, listen. I think it's interesting that you can both feel that the party you have been an active member of for so long is being pulled in directions that might even take it away from where you are as a principal conservative.

And at the same time, like, I hear that you feel to seemingly trust that process, that like, if you all have a neutral primary and if the case is made, you believe in kind of the Republican electorate at large. I do, with the certain exception of the 14th District of Georgia where Marjorie Taylor Greene lives. Because I can't imagine ever voting for someone who talks about Jewish space lasers, but that's just me. For Brock, if the party can just get the courage to reject Trump and reject what he sees

as an increasingly small number of voters who support him, the party can go back to the way it was, a party that wins. Remember, in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned in August. We got creamed. We, the Republicans, I was, what, 12, resigned in August. We got creamed. We, the Republicans, I was what, 12, 11, whatever. But we, the Republicans, got creamed in November. We got creamed again two years later.

And by 1980, we took control of the U.S. Senate and put Ronald Reagan in the White House. Things change. Pendulums swing. And that's my prayer. What gives you that hope that the process will sort of fix the problem? Time heals all wounds? I don't know.

That's helpful. This is great. I spent some time thinking about this stuff. The thing is, Brock is an outlier in the RNC. Most committee members aren't coming out against Trump. But they're also not necessarily Trump loyalists, like John Fredericks. They're the people Brock talks about, who want to keep coming to this meeting, year after year.

And while they're the people least likely to say how they're feeling, they're also the ones who potentially matter the most. How you doing? Stan. Hey, Henry Barber. Nice to meet you. Okay, that'll work. Okay. Let's find a place to sit down. When we told colleagues we were heading to this meeting, they told us to find Henry Barber.

If Brock is a party lifer, Barber is royalty. His uncle is Haley Barber, the former governor of Mississippi, and actually a former RNC chair. Oddly enough, I ended up becoming an RNC member in 05, so a pretty long time, since the middle of the George W. administration. I mean, and that seems, that's so many different versions of the Republican Party. How have you kind of maintained RNC credibility throughout all of those changes? Well, we have all kinds of incredible members on the RNC.

I'm more of a political hack. I'm real driven by one goal for the RNC, and that's winning elections. It's the only statistic that matters. You can see how Barber's been able to navigate so many versions of the party in the way he talks about the RNC chair race. At this point, it's really a binary choice between Ronna McDaniel and Harmeet Dhillon. I really like both of them, And they both have strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, Harmeet is this tough lawyer and that's the way everybody thinks of her.

But she's really kind of showed this soft side. She's kind of opened up. And with Ronna, you know, she's just, she's been really steady. Look, it's a hard thing, right? If Ronna and Harmeet can't first come together, how does the 168 or the RNC come together? How do all the state parties come together? And if we can't come together, how do you expect our voters to come together? Now, ultimately, we'll have to have a nominee who really draws everybody together. That person is sort of the real uniter. But we've got to all unite together to put the moving parts together to have a winning election.

Or we're going to have a nominee that doesn't have a team ready to go and win the most important election in the next two years. Won't say in our lifetime. So part of Barber's role has been to help the GOP navigate its changes. And in that role, he worked on the party's now famous post-mortem, after Romney lost to Obama in 2012, the one we obsessed over last season. We talked about if we're going to have success growing the party with minorities, we need to look at comprehensive immigration reform. And then along came a guy named Donald Trump.

And he kind of turned the world upside down. And he did some things differently than I think we envisioned in the report. But you can't argue with success. And, you know, of course he won. But he did go about it a little differently than maybe what we envisioned. And now, he's been tasked by Ronna McDaniel with co-leading a new autopsy about what went wrong in the 2022 midterm elections. No, you got the wrong words. Though he refuses to call this one an autopsy.

Analysis and, you know, the 24 game plan. What diagnosis? Though he refuses to call this one an autopsy. Analysis. Analysis and, you know, the 24 game plan. Sure. So I think if you look at the 22 cycle, I think there's a lesson for the 24 cycle. Our candidates who were focused on the future, who were focused on public policy, did much, much better in the 22 cycle than the candidates who were stuck in the past, and particularly those who were just talking about 2020. Our candidates need to look at Brian Kemp, Mike DeWine, Governor DeSantis. These were folks who were focused on the future, who delivered for their states, and they were elected overwhelmingly. The candidates focused on the past. You know, they didn't do as well.

Yeah. When you point to people like Kemp, like DeWine, like DeSantis, who did have very successful midterms, how is that compatible with a party that Donald Trump is still the center of political gravity? Because the forward-looking nature of those people does seem kind of in conflict with the backwards-looking nature of the most important figure in Republican politics. Well, President Trump is a mighty important figure in the Republican Party. There's not any question about that. And look, he's running for president. Yes.

But the lesson for him and the lesson for anybody else that wants to run in 24, in my opinion, is that any candidate in the 24 cycle who's not focused like a laser beam on the future is not going to win, including President Trump. But if he is focused on the future, then President Trump could end up being our nominee. And if he is our nominee and he is focused on the future, he'll be by it. What should the party do with the Mike Lindells of the world who have not let up on the election conspiracy, have not let up on saying the things were stolen? Can that next nominee be a uniter?

It has to be a uniter. I'm saying, can they come out of that process be a uniter? Have to be a uniter. I'm saying, can they come out of that process as a uniter? If that wing of Mike Lindell, election conspiracy theorist, are still a big voice in the Republican Party. Instead, there's a great thing that happens in politics. When you have a good, strong nominee for president, guess what? Everybody follows in. They set the tone. And so I want to have that Reagan-esque leader who we nominate in 2024, who brings us together, who grows the party by addition, who independents flock to, who moderate Democrats go, I'm voting for that guy because I want the opportunity that

Republicans that this guy or the gal are offering. And so I think folks like Mike Lindell and others, I think they'll follow behind. If that leader comes through the primary, they will fall in line. Yeah, and it just happens. I mean, and the reality is, look at 2016. That's what happened with Donald Trump. The party followed behind him. And I think the press wonders, well, y'all are never going to get rid of Donald Trump.

You're never going to move on. We're not trying to get rid of Donald Trump. But all we know is, is we have to move forward together if we want to win. And look, just because I had sort of a different vision for how we might grow the party. Trump did it in a different way. But where he grew it with a lot of working class people, we went backwards in suburbia. So how do we bring those coalitions together and grow that? So, you know, Trump can be part of this 24 victory, whether he's the nominee or not.

We need Donald Trump. We need the people who love Donald Trump. We need him to be part of the solution if we're going to win. Because if we don't come together, I can assure you we're going to have Joe Biden for four more years, and America ain't going to like that. So when we look ahead to the diagnosis, it sounds like we're thinking about— No, no. 24 victory. You'll like that. So when we look ahead to the diagnosis, it sounds like we're thinking about... No, no. 24,000. It sounds like Trump...

It sounds like, you know, this is not about to be some anti-Trump's creed. This can both learn from Donald Trump solutions and the challenges. Both of those things can exist in the same room. Anybody who has a plan and the foundation of it is anti-Trump has got not a clue because that is a path to losing. I know we need Donald Trump to be part of this, part of our success. You know, we need everybody in the party and we got to grow the party beyond that. And look, you know, it's one step at a time. And, you know, right now we're electing leadership at the RNC. And there's some contention in these races, and that's fine.

And it's healthy, actually. But they've got to be the first ones to come back together. And I think that's where Harmeet and Rana, you know, particularly have to show leadership. And, you know, look, there are all kinds of people. There are all kinds of people with different ideas. But I think if we work together and we have a leader, that it can work. Now, if we don't get the right leader as our nominee, we got problems. And everything I said, just forget it.

That was something I was going to ask. You already ended it with that. Yeah, I was going to say, well, if it doesn't happen, but to your point, like, that's where the fight is. We lose. And look, there's a lot at stake. Yeah, that's all I got. And I got a lot of wind noise coming on this mic. A few hours later, after we'd gone back to our own hotel,

I saw a tweet from Charlie Kirk that he'd just released an interview he'd done with Governor Ron DeSantis. Right now the RNC is meeting in Dana Point, California. And there are some questions of who should lead the RNC and whether it should be Ronna for a fourth term or go a different direction with Harmeet Dhillon. What are your thoughts on this? Well, we've had three substandard election cycles in a row. I think we need a change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC out of D.C.

But I do think we need some fresh thinking. And here's the thing, just practically speaking, you need grassroots Republicans to power this organization with volunteering and donations. I think it's going to be very difficult to energize people to want to give money, to want to volunteer their time with the RNC if they don't see a change in direction. It was a forward-looking message and a clear play for Trump's base. But it wasn't exactly the unity in this chair fight that Barber was seeking. After the break. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, folks, strap yourself in. Here we go.

The chair vote. It's a very grand staircase we're walking down right now. The next day, it's finally time for the RNC chair vote. Hi. The vote's happening in a huge ballroom. It's full of RNC members and other members of the press. At the front of the room, there's a stage and a podium. Hanging behind the podium, there's a big red elephant logo, flanked by American flags.

Ronna McDaniel takes the stage. So, I'm really excited to be in California, and I know a lot of you ask, why are we in California? Because I just wanted to rub Nancy Pelosi's face in it one more time. Okay? She is no longer the Speaker of the House. You should be thrilled. She's downplaying the midterms' losses.

If this had been a presidential year, we would have won the Electoral College with 297 votes. That's a really good sign as we head into 2024. But most of all... Nothing we do is more important than making sure that Joe Biden is a one-term president. But in order to do that, we have to be unified. She's sticking to the party line on the importance of unity.

Reminded of a Bible verse that Abraham Lincoln famously used from the Gospel of Matthew. a Bible verse that Abraham Lincoln famously used from the Gospel of Matthew. Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. We have got to work together. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, folks, strap yourself in. Here we go. Then, the vote begins. Alabama, will you please come forward and cast your votes. RNC members are called up to vote by state.

Everyone, can you please return to your seats? All right, here we go. If anybody sees anybody out by the coffee, can you please tell the police to return to their seats okay we do have results okay 167 votes were cast which means you need 84 to have a majority. Mike Lindell received four votes. Harmeet Dhillon received 51 votes. And Ronald McDaniel received 111 votes.

McDaniel returns to the microphone. We've got to get Mike and Harmeet up here. Mike and Harmeet, can you please come up? Thank you. You guys should ring up. We have a winner. We have a winner. McDaniels wins, and they have a little unity moment up there. What Dylan is hugging McDaniel, and Lindell is also coming up there.

But please, please, guys, we need all of us. We heard from grassroots, we know. We heard from me, we heard Mike Lindell. But with us united and all of us going together, the Democrats are going to hear us in 2020. For McDaniel, it was a decisive statement. No matter the grassroots pressure, a strong majority of the people

in this room were still behind her. And not only did she win, the margin of victory was way bigger than people expected. How you doing? What do you think? What you just witnessed was the...

Are we on the record? I'm recording. Is that all right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. As we're leaving the meeting hall, we find John Fredericks, who has made his way over to the wall door for the vote. Tell me when you're set. Good.

What you just saw, what you just witnessed, was the greatest middle finger, the greatest New Jersey salute in the history of politics that the tone deaf, 111 of them, just gave to the grassroots of the Republican Party. as breaking this thing up. It is incredible display of basically go to hell. We're going to reelect our chairman. We got the perks. We got the resort hotels. We got the money. We got the spas. We got the private jets.

You all can go to hell. They don't care what we think. This is the most outrageous display of elitism. This is like the Politburo at the Black Sea. We appreciate that. Let's go over there. Across the room, we spot Oscar Brock. Hey, how you doing? Good to see you again.

Sitting by himself at a folding table next to that giant staircase. Okay, so you tell me. Oh, please don't. Make me relive the worst morning of my life. How? I'm kidding. Not bad. I mean, what's your initial takeaway?

The margin was maybe bigger than expected? Well, A, yes, the margin was bigger than expected. The margin was maybe bigger than expected. Well, A, yes, the margin was bigger than expected. B, I was surprised at how many people were willing to support somebody with a proven track record of losing campaigns. Watch what they did. I don't have any clue. The logic that led people to support Rana eludes me.

What do you think this means for sort of the identity of the Republican Party and what happened today? Can I bring up something we talked about yesterday? Time heals all wounds. Do you still think that? No, I will always believe that. We'll get there. It just may take a little longer than I thought four hours ago.

How long? Well, at least, I mean, it certainly will not happen in the next two years because she's going to tilt the playing field totally in favor of Donald Trump because she's totally incapable of being unbiased, right? He made her. He made her into what she is. It's going to be at least 2026 before we're able to heal the party, truly. We're going to track the election analysis autopsy effort. Yeah, good luck with that. Because we're never going to tell the truth, right? We're never going to tell the truth.

That one of the big, not the only, but one of the big reasons is that Donald Trump endorsed unprepared candidates and caused them to finish first in their primaries. And we'll never, we'll never say that out loud because we're stupid. Thank you. I appreciate the time. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and I know it's a big day. And Donald Trump is going to squish me like a... And just as we're about to head out, we finally get the chance to talk to Harmeet Dhillon.

Do you worry about the grassroots potential backlash to the decision? Yeah, I am worried about it. You know, but I heard it loud and clear is one of the reasons why I ran. They've been a backlash to the RNC for years, specifically after the 2020 election. You think that's been building? That was building through that. Absolutely, absolutely.

I haven't even looked at my phone to see what the press and what the public is saying, but I have hundreds of messages from friends who are telling me that the result is very upsetting and they're disappointed. But as you can see in my statement, I said I will continue to work with the RNC and we have to try to make it better as best we can, despite the many members here seem to be out of touch with the grassroots.

Potential backlash. Are you going to be trying to out there trying to stop it? Are you? I mean. No, I mean, I'm not like going to say words from the asteroid or anything. I mean, I'll just do my best to have input. But, you know, this current chair runs the party in a, you know, unilateral type fashion. So whatever role I have is in a way at,

you know, like what what room she makes. And then if I say yes, then that's what happens. So are you disappointed in how the Trump campaign lended its soft support to McDaniel? I think that, believe me, if you go online and see what the reaction of President Trump's supporters are overwhelmingly to that choice, it's negative. Now, by contrast, I have no relationships with Ron DeSantis. I think I met him once at a reception four years ago. I've never spoken to him one-on-one.

I have no relationship with him, and he has no reason to expect I'll, given my voting history, that I'll support his campaign. But he heard loud and clear. I mean, it was brilliant, actually, for any politician who wants to be the heir to the throne to say, hey, grassroots, I hear you loud and clear. It was a win-win proposition. That makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me is for the grassroots president that was Donald Trump to not make that decision. Well, that was, I cannot answer for that.

I have nothing to do with it. I got some angry messages from inside the Mar-a-Lago team yesterday. My partners did too. Whatever, you know. In effect, how do you think about 2020? No. No? No, look, people make mistakes and miscalculations.

I don't control them. I can only control what I do. And so I will keep on keeping on. Given the party's calls for unity, I was interested in Dillon's take on the 2022 autopsy before she announced her chair candidacy. You were named to be part of the folks who were looking at the last election, the group kind of doing that analysis. McDaniel had tapped Dillon to chair that report,

along with Henry Barber. One of the things that the Times wants to do is track the Republican kind of efforts to look at the last election and heading into the next one. I feel like the work that you are about to do, that Barber is about to do, is really important to that. Do you see it as that important, or do you think that's just another sheet of paper from the RNC

that might be ripped up? Well, I probably shouldn't answer that. No, I think you're going to expect something deeply important. important or do you think that's just another sheet of paper from the RNC that might be ripped up? Well, I probably shouldn't answer that. No, I think your answer is actually deeply important. All I'm going to say is, and you can take my implication, I've served on many committees before at the RNC and I chose to run for chair because I didn't like the way certain things were being done. There are a lot of committees and little has changed in the six years I've been in the RNC. Well, look for this one. I appreciate your time. I really do. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. Thank you. Appreciate it. So, Astead, tell me about the day we just had. We are leaving the Republican winter meeting and we had an interesting day. Barber talked about the chair race as being the first step toward unity. And if that's true, you can see how hard this is going to be.

This week, we found a party that was being pretty honest about the situation it's in, the Trump problem it faces, and its small window to put together a winning coalition ahead of 2024. But knowing there's a problem is different than finding a solution. It shows me that the Republican Party's identity crisis is more than just grassroots versus establishment or Trump and anti-Trump, there are so many factions, and all of them are having a kind of intra-party squabble right now.

What's going to clean that up is the presidential primary, but how that goes threatens to be so ugly, so divisive, that it has even the people in here really nervous. So I just think mess is in our future. We're coming. We're coming, come on, we're ready. Let's go. Oh, we're back to the Waldorf Astoria.

I don't know when I'll be back here. Never. Yeah. This might be it for me and you, Waldron. The Run-Up is reported by me, Ested Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, Luke Vander Ploeg, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Franny Kartoff and Lisa Tobin. With original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Alicia Baitu. It was mixed by Corey Schreppel and fact-checked by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnik, Larissa Anderson, David Haufinger, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibequa, Renan Barelli, Jeffrey Miranda, and Maddie Maciela. If you like the show and want to get updates on latest episodes, follow our feed wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, y'all.