James Cross
The Republican party has been facing unique challenges in the last several years. Donald Trump, when he was elected in 2016, set the party on a new trajectory towards extremism, and the party is still seeing the effects of his influence even as some Republicans seek to move beyond Trumpism back to a conservative movement closer to the center.
Trump at the Far Right
Trump himself has not attempted to move back to the center in his years since he left the Oval Office. Trump’s presidency was marked by significantly heightened rhetoric towards minorities of all kinds, women, and anyone who didn’t agree with him, and he’s only doubled down on some of those tendencies in the years since he left the office.
Trump’s rhetoric was so intense and polarizing – and in some cases outright wrong – that he was banned from multiple social medias shortly before he left the oval office. Twitter and Meta decided that Trump had violated their terms of service with his speech, and removed him from the platforms permanently.
Trump’s Personal Social Media Platform
Trump’s access to Twitter has since been reinstated, with the massive changes that have happened at the company since it was bought out by Elon Musk. He hasn’t returned to the platform, though, instead choosing to stay on the social media platform that he founded himself, Truth Social.
Truth Social is a far-right echo chamber of Trump and his deep red allies. While it doesn’t have anywhere near the user base of bigger platforms like Twitter or Meta, he has still managed to cultivate a small following of loyalists who eat up everything that he says as gospel, even if he’s speaking against one of their own.
Radicalizing the Party
Trump has managed to ruin moderate and even conservative Republicans in this way. Any Republican who doesn’t bend the knee and do anything that Trump wants them to finds themselves under fire from the former president, and it’s a power that he wields indiscriminately.
This is something that he has used against both small and major Republicans in the party. He called former presidential candidate John McCain a traitor and weak, though he was a war hero. He’s called moderate Republicans RINO’s (Republicans in Name Only), and has, in his seven years in politics, gone out of his way to radicalize the party far beyond what was seen in 2015.
No Sense of Loyalty
Unfortunately for many Republicans, Trump has no sense of loyalty, and has turned on people who have worked for him on a dime. This is a pattern that extended even to his former Vice President, Mike Pence, who Trump threw under the bus after he did his constitutional duty and certified the 2020 electoral win of Joe Biden.
It’s not just popular Republican figures who Trump has come out against, though. Lesser known figures in national politics have found themselves under attack from the former president, including the former head of the Republican National Committee (RNC), Ronna McDaniel.
About Ronna
Ronna McDaniel is an American political strategist who served as the head of the RNC from 2017 until she was ousted in 2024. She is a member of the Romney family, though she has since distanced herself from her family name due to Trump’s backlash against Mitt Romney, a prominent Trump critic.
For years, McDaniel was a Trump loyalist and ally. She, and the RNC as a whole, pushed Trump’s theory of the Big Lie regarding the 2020 election, even going so far to support his claims of voter fraud, despite there being no evidence to support the theory whatsoever.
A Significant Trump Ally
McDaniel was involved in taking down moderate Republicans and Trump critics as well, during her time as head of the RNC. To that end, she was significantly involved in orchestrating the censure of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republicans who served on the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
The censureship allowed the RNC to characterize the January 6 attack as “legitimate political discourse” on the part of Republicans. In the public hearings from the House committee, a video excerpt was played where it was revealed that McDaniel had directed the RNC to help organize fake electors for the Trump fake electors pot, at the request of Trump and John Eastman.
Trump Was Unimpressed
Despite these various exhibitions of party loyalty, though, Trump was not impressed. In his eyes, McDaniel didn’t do enough to show her total and complete loyalty to Trump, and in February of 2024, during a campaign rally he made clear his intent to restructure the RNC to his liking.
He announced that he would prefer for North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley to replace McDaniels. He also stated that he would prefer Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, to join Whatley as co-chair of the RNC, should he become the nominee for the Republican party.
McDaniel Stepped Down
After this claim, it was no surprise that McDaniel announced that she would be stepping down as the head of the RNC in February of this year. She stated that she wanted to make room for Trump to be able to make the necessary changes to leadership ahead of the 2024 election.
When the announcement was made, the justification was provided that Trump needed to be able to make changes due to the fact that he was the Republican nominee for president. At the time, though, Trump had yet to win the number of delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. Since then, he has won the formal nomination, but at the time it was a preemptive decision.
McDaniel After the RNC
In the weeks since McDaniel stepped down, the RNC has undergone rapid restructuring. As Trump wanted, he installed Lara Trump and Michael Whatley as the heads of the RNC, and they’ve already started making changes to the way Republican campaigns are structured, much to the displeasure of many members.
McDaniel, on the other hand, has gone out of her way to try and separate herself from the extremism that has become par for the course at the RNC. In interviews conducted, she has tried to portray herself as a significantly more moderate political figure than she’s been seen as for the last few years.
Hired on at NBC
To that end, McDaniel recently accepted a job as a political contributor at NBC studios. She started last week with a Meet the Press interview, where she again tried to portray herself as a more moderate individual.
She even went so far to portray herself as a mere cog in the Republican machine. She told fellow MSNBC anchors that her previous views had all been stated in service of her job, and that as the head of the RNC, it was necessary for her to fall on her sword and “take one for the team.”
Other Anchors Unimpressed
Unfortunately for McDaniel, the other contributors at NBC were unimpressed. Chuck Todd and the other anchors all pointed out McDaniel’s hypocrisy, especially in the fact that she was an outward proponent of the Big Lie during her time as the RNC, and no amount of walking back her words will change how she affected the outcome.
McDaniel tried to defend herself, stating that she was a person who believed in justice like any other American, and that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election fair and square – the first time that she had personally admitted that fact on a public platform. The others were still not thrilled.
Intense Backlash
The backlash from the anchors at NBC was intense. They all banded together, stating that McDaniel’s hiring at the network was a mistake in the first place, and that someone who had condoned the January 6 attack on the capitol shouldn’t be platformed on a public network like NBC.
The displeasure from their existing talent was so much that, merely four days after McDaniel was hired on at the network, NBC revoked their decision and canceled the $600,000 two-year contract that she had been signed on for.
McDaniel in Legal Talks
McDaniel is evidently in talks with lawyers to discuss suing NBC for breach of contract. It is believed that she will seek a full payout of the amount of her contract, though there’s no news on the proceedings regarding that rumor, yet.
While the anchors at NBC may have had a point, there is something to be said for allowing individuals of all political opinions to have their moment to speak. Should McDaniel have been fired from her contract after only four days? Maybe not. But once she was hired, NBC also should have stuck by their decision and not allowed themselves to be bullied by anchors with voices louder than theirs.
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