Ronna McDaniel

On November 13, 2016, Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, was announced as the new White House Chief of Staff, thereby turning the RNC chairman election into an open seat election. Soon afterward, several candidates were reported as likely to seek the position, including McDaniel.[15] On December 14, 2016, McDaniel was chosen by then president-elect Trump as his recommendation to replace Priebus.[16][1] She served as deputy chair before her formal election.[14] She was officially elected as RNC chair on January 19, 2017, becoming the second woman (after Mary Louise Smith) in RNC history to hold the post.[17] According to The Washington Post, Trump requested that she stop using her maiden name, and McDaniel subsequently did not use it in official communications.[18] McDaniel denies that Trump pressured her to change the name.[10]

In 2018, McDaniel spent up to six hours daily calling donors. Under McDaniel's leadership, the RNC had what The Washington Post described as "a huge financial edge heading into the 2018 midterm elections".[19] As of January 2018, the RNC had almost $40 million banked while the Democratic National Committee had $6.3 million.[2] As of July 17, the Republican National Committee had raised about $213 million for the election cycle with $50.7 million in cash on hand and no debt. In comparison, the Democratic National Committee raised $101 million during the same period.[20] After many white suburban female voters switched to vote for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, McDaniel said that the party would engage in a "deep data dive" to learn why.[21]

The New York Times described McDaniel as "unfailingly loyal to Trump".[2] According to a 2018 study in The Journal of Politics, under her leadership the RNC has sought to consistently promote Trump and his policies.[1] This includes running ads for Trump's 2020 campaign as early as in 2018, putting a considerable number of Trump campaign workers and affiliates on the RNC payroll, spending considerable funds at Trump-owned properties, covering Trump's legal fees in the Russian interference investigation, hosting Trump's "Fake News Awards", and harshly criticizing Trump critics within the Republican Party.[1] The day after Republican congressman Mark Sanford, known for his criticism of Trump, lost his primary against a pro-Trump candidate, McDaniel tweeted that those who do not embrace Trump's agenda "will be making a mistake".[22][23] In April 2018, McDaniel praised Trump as a "moral leader".[24]

Politico reported that after Trump endorsed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore just days before the special Alabama Senate election, the White House influenced McDaniel to resume RNC funding for Moore, who lost in a narrow election to Democrat Doug Jones in December 2017. According to two people close to McDaniel, she privately complained about spending time and money on Moore's behalf. McDaniel was reportedly shocked by Trump's decision to endorse Moore but felt that she had little choice but to follow the president's wishes.[25]

In January 2019, Mitt Romney penned an editorial for The Washington Post criticizing President Trump's moral character. McDaniel said the editorial by her uncle, "an incoming Republican freshman senator", "feeds into what the Democrats and mainstream media want" and was "disappointing and unproductive".[26] In March 2019, McDaniel stated she would not support "the nicest, most moral person in the world" to be president if they were not "aligned with [her] politics".[27]

In May 2019, when House Representative Justin Amash became the first Republican member of Congress to call for Trump's impeachment, citing the evidence of obstruction of justice in the Mueller Report, McDaniel criticized Amash, saying he was "parroting the Democrats' talking points on Russia".[28] While she did not explicitly express support for a primary challenge against Amash, she tweeted, "voters in Amash's district strongly support this president".[29]

In September 2020, following the release of audio recordings from February 2020 where President Trump said he was intentionally downplaying the coronavirus, McDaniel defended Trump's handling of the coronavirus. She said, "history will look back on him well as how he handled this pandemic."[30]

By November 2021, RNC was still covering the legal fees for former president Trump related to investigations into his financial practices in New York.[31]

By May 2020, the RNC had allocated $20 million to oppose Democratic lawsuits to make voting easier during the coronavirus pandemic, in particular expanding vote-by-mail to states that had not adopted it previously.[32][33] McDaniel accused Democrats of trying to "destroy" and "assault" the integrity of elections.[34][33] McDaniel said, "a national vote by mail system would open the door to a new set of problems, such as potential election fraud."[32] According to Deseret News, "Election experts say while voting by mail can be abused, it's rare and inconsequential."[32] In general, research has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States.[35]

In June 2020, McDaniel shared a RNC video warning about extensive voter fraud in the upcoming 2020 election due to expansions of vote-by-mail related to the coronavirus pandemic.[36] The Washington Post fact-checker wrote that the video "tortures the facts to create a narrative of an election about to be stolen. The illegality being satirized here is a phantom. State election officials, in many cases Republicans, are expanding vote-by-mail as a public health precaution to prevent the risk of spreading the coronavirus — not to rig the outcome."[36]

After Joe Biden won the 2020 election, McDaniel claimed without evidence that there was large-scale electoral fraud and voter fraud, and had the RNC promote falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the election.[37][38][39][40] At the same time that she was making baseless claims of fraud, President Trump endorsed her to continue to lead the RNC in the January 2021 RNC chair election.[3][41][40]

In 2022, McDaniel led efforts within the RNC to censure Republican members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who had voted to impeach Trump over his incitement of a pro-Trump mob in the U.S. Capitol attack and served on a bipartisan committee to investigate the attack.[42][4] Within the Republican Party, Cheney had a consistently conservative record, aside from her criticisms of Trump.[42] The censure that McDaniel orchestrated characterized the U.S. Capitol attack as "legitimate political discourse".[4]

In October 2017 after Harvey Weinstein, a major donor to the Democratic Party, was accused of sexual abuse, McDaniel said that "returning Weinstein's dirty money should be a no-brainer"; the Democratic Party did give away some of Weinstein's contributions. In January 2018, Steve Wynn resigned as RNC finance chairman after he was accused of sexual misconduct and McDaniel came under pressure to return his donations. McDaniel said that Wynn should be allowed "due process" and that his donations would only be returned after the allegations were investigated by the Wynn Resorts board of directors.[43][44][45] In May 2019, it was reported that Wynn had donated nearly $400,000 to the national Republican Party, most of it to the RNC, the previous month. In 2017, Wynn and his wife donated $375,000 to the RNC. As of May 2019, none of the money has been returned by the RNC. Steve Wynn has never been convicted of the allegations.[46][47]

In September 2019, McDaniel emailed Doug Manchester, whose nomination to become Ambassador to the Bahamas was stalled in the Senate, asking for $500,000 in donations to the Republican Party. Manchester responded, noting that his wife had given $100,000 and that his family would "respond" once he was confirmed by the Republican-led Senate to the ambassadorship. Manchester copied the email to aides of two U.S. senators whose support he needed to win confirmation. CBS News described McDaniel's action as a "possible pay-for-play scheme" for the ambassadorship.[48][49] The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in May 2021 that a federal grand jury had issued a subpoena in a criminal investigation into Manchester's nomination, apparently focused on the RNC, McDaniel and RNC co-chair Tommy Hicks, and possibly members of Congress. The Union-Tribune reported the investigation began in 2020.[50]

Under McDaniel's leadership, the RNC set up a website in April 2018 which attacked and sought to undermine former FBI Director James Comey and called him "Lyin' Comey".[51] McDaniel said Comey was a liar and a leaker, and said that the RNC would "make sure the American people understand why he has no one but himself to blame for his complete lack of credibility".[51][52]

In late July 2018, McDaniel falsely[53][54] claimed that Twitter was shadow banning Republicans, including herself.[55] Twitter did not shadowban Republicans, but due to a glitch, several prominent conservative and left-leaning Twitter accounts were not automatically suggested in the site's drop-down search results.[56][57][55] Twitter responded, saying it would fix the bug.[58]

Politico reported in November 2018 that McDaniel called on the Republican candidate Martha McSally to be more aggressive during the ballot counting process in the Arizona Senate race. The Arizona Senate race remained undecided for several days after election night while all ballots were being accounted in a close contest.[59] McSally held a lead by the end of election night, but her lead narrowed over the next few days, as more ballots were counted.[59] Reportedly, the McSally campaign was being pressured from McDaniel for not being aggressive enough.[59][60][61]

On May 13, 2020 ProPublica reported that big RNC contracts were awarded by McDaniel to companies closely connected to her.[62] Contracts went to her husband's company and companies that supported her 2015 run for the chairmanship of the Republican Party in Michigan.[62]

On October 18, 2020, McDaniel refused to condemn QAnon on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.[63]

On October 27, 2022, McDaniel openly mocked prominent Democratic politicians John Fetterman and Joseph R. Biden for suffering speech impediments. Fetterman was recovering from a stroke at the time.[64]