Newly-elected Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Whatley and co-chairwoman Lara Trump, in their first joint interview since locking down the positions on Friday, explained to Breitbart News that a “new dawn” has set in at the GOP’s main party committee and everything is about winning in November.
Whatley and Trump, the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump and wife of Trump’s son, Eric Trump, were elected on Friday by members of the RNC as the new chair and co-chair of the RNC. They replace now former chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and were supported by the former president, who just locked down the GOP presidential nomination this week with blowout victories on Super Tuesday. Whatley and Trump sat for their first exclusive joint interview with Breitbart News moments after they won the positions at the RNC meetings in Houston, and they told Breitbart News the focus from the party is now exclusively on winning in November.
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD – FEBRUARY 28: Laura Trump, President Donald Trumps daughter in-law and member of his 2020 reelection campaign, walks on stage for a conversation with Matt Schlapp , Chairman of the American Conservative Union, and Brad Parscale , campaign manager for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, during the Conservative Political Action Conference 2020 (CPAC) hosted by the American Conservative Union on February 28, 2020 in National Harbor, MD. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
“This year, the next eight months, are all about making sure that we win in November,” Whatley said. “Everything we do is going to be focused on winning. We are going to have to get out the vote and we are going to have to protect the ballot. Every dollar we raise and we spend at the RNC is going to be focused on those two missions. We are going to work very, very closely with the president’s campaign, and we’re going to make sure that we are a seamless operation. At the end of the day, the RNC was built 146 years ago with one purpose, which was to elect Republican presidents. We also know we’ve got Senate races and House races that are really truly important for us, so we are going to work up and down the country to win up and down the ballot. But the way we’re going to do that is getting out the vote and protecting the ballot.”
Lara Trump said that Whatley’s history as chairman of the North Carolina GOP has given him a background in election integrity and, combined with a renewed fundraising push she will help lead, the party is now in prime position to defeat Democrat President Joe Biden.
“I would second that as well,” she told Breitbart News. “I think the great news for the RNC is that Chairman Whatley has a great background in this. If you look at North Carolina in 2020, my father-in-law is the first to give him great accolades on what he did to protect the vote, and people felt very confident that their vote counted and there was no funny business. That’s very important, and it’s critical to the future of this country. We’ll be laser-focused on that. I just held up a check for $100,000 as we made our announcement that the two of us were officially in these positions because I think raising money is obviously something else that we’ll focus on a lot. We are in a bit of new dawn here at the RNC. We’re going to bring a lot of people back in to donate—small dollar, large dollar. We’re going to be focused on that as well.”
Whatley said that his history of working with Lara Trump will make the process of integrating the RNC with the Trump campaign and other party committees and candidates up and down the ballot much easier.
“You asked about us being kind of a team and how we planned on working together,” Whatley said. “I think the key is we have already worked together in 2016 and 2020 when I was running North Carolina. Lara was there a lot. She was an incredible asset for the campaign, for the president and his team. We are really, I think, in sync. The vision I think we have and we’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks is absolutely right on point. Collectively, I think the answer is we are going to work all day every day to make sure we are going to win in November.”
Whatley added that the team is broader than just the RNC.
“We are one team. It’s not just a team with Lara and I,” Whatley said. “It’s a team between the RNC and the president and his campaign. There is a lot that needs to be done over the course of the next 241 days to make sure we have what we need to win. We need to be working every day on the ground in battleground states and in battleground districts across the country to turn out the vote and protect the ballot. We are going to work together and make sure we’re getting done everything that needs to get done and that we’re blocking and tackling and dotting every I and crossing every T.”
Lara Trump added, too, that she and Whatley will be making changes and moves wherever they deem they are necessary to reconfigure the party for success.
“I think that’s right and I think our roles in how all this plays out will naturally kind of take shape, and I think I’ve been a very forward-facing figure for my father-in-law these last two campaign cycles, and I’ll continue on that front as well,” she said. “But obviously I’ve had experience as a senior adviser to his campaign for three years with election day operations. We’ll see wherever we need to fit in and wherever we need to move around and make changes, we’re going to do that as well together as a team. I think Monday we’ll figure out a lot more of that and see where it takes us.”
Whatley said one of the major moves that the RNC will soon be making is building out what are called joint fundraising agreements, or JFAs, between the RNC, other party committees and state parties, and the Trump campaign. Those allow for increased maximum donation totals, so big donors can help the effort big time. Whatley said to expect JFAs to come soon, and by working closely with the new GOP nominee, Donald Trump, he expects fundraising to take off.
“You’re right about the JFAs,” Whatley said. “You’re right that we’re going to be working together with the Trump campaign. Our single biggest factor in getting the fundraising going moving forward is that Donald J. Trump is our nominee. Working with him, we are going to be able to get the money in that we need to get these operations out and win this election.”
Lara Trump said that one of the things this change in leadership at the RNC does for donors is it helps them be confident their investments in the RNC go to actually winning.
“He is his own best spokesperson. Sometimes, he’s our best fundraiser—Donald Trump,” she said. “To be honest, I’ve heard from people since there were talks about this change in leadership at the RNC. There were people who were looking for a little bit of change. Change is a good thing. It’s how you grow. I think that the fact that Michael and I are here now maybe gives people a little more peace of mind. We’re going to make sure—we have a lot of work to do on Monday. We have to make sure the vendors are properly vetted and all the ins and outs of everything are done the right way. This is something I’ve talked about a lot. We want to make sure that people feel confident that when they donate to the RNC, their money is going to what they care about, and that’s winning. The truth is you can’t win a presidential election without the aid of the RNC. This is incredibly important. It will be up to us to encourage people very publicly that they should be donating to this entity, because it’s necessary to win.”
One of the biggest focuses of the new RNC leadership team, both Whatley and Lara Trump told Breitbart News, is going to be election integrity efforts. Asked about those, Whatley said the party is aiming to have poll workers and observations and attorneys there in the room everywhere in America where votes are being cast and where votes are being counted, but also making sure the “rules of the road” are clear in every state heading into election day.
“A couple of different thoughts—the first is that obviously on election day we need to make absolutely sure that we are in the room with observers and attorneys when votes are being cast and votes are being counted,” Whatley said. “We will be building that. But this effort is far bigger than just election day and post-election day. The work has to get started now. So we have two basic operations we’re going to be expanding and building on that we’ve started on at the RNC that I’ve been general counsel at the last couple years. One is we need to work with legislators and election regulators and officials to make sure the field is set and we know the rules, the laws, the regulations in all of these states are as clear as they need to be to be sure we will have transparent and fair elections. We’re doing that right now. We’ve already been involved in 78 lawsuits across the country that we have issued and responded to. We’re going to be engaged in more just to make sure the rules of the road in these states are rules we can all live with. Then, secondly, you have to be in the room. We’re going to recruit and train tens of thousands of volunteers across the country and hundreds and thousands of attorneys across the country to make sure we are in the room when the votes are being cast and the votes are being counted.”
Lara Trump said that the RNC will be taking a more proactive role in election day operations as well when it comes to poll watchers and workers.
“Something I’ll add onto just a thought there, something that the RNC had already started and we will expand on is having trained poll-watchers,” she said. “These aren’t just people who will physically stand in these locations, but they are able to count the ballots and they can handle the ballots so they know how many ballots came in and how many should go out. It’s something that unfortunately wasn’t available to the RNC until this last year due to a moratorium of sorts, but it’s available, it’s happening, and we’re going to expand on that. Nothing is more important than making sure people feel confident that our elections are free and fair and transparent. We are going to try to do our part on that.”
Lara Trump also said that a huge part of her role in this position will be communicating the new RNC’s objectives to key players and to the public. As someone who has been a public-facing member of the Trump family for a long time—her presence on television and across media as a top surrogate for her father-in-law’s various campaigns—she believes she can successfully help get Trump voters nationwide to engage with the rules the way they are so Republicans win.
“I think we have to communicate with people and we have to make sure we get the message out to people that especially on things like voting early—traditionally Republicans are not early voters,” she said. “People would love one day of voting, they would love voter ID laws all across this country, and they would love paper ballots. We don’t exist in a time like that right now. We have to play the hand we are dealt, and the hand we are dealt is election day is sometimes weeks in advance of the actual Nov. 5, in this case, and I think it will be up to me and certainly I’ll take a big role in ensuring we get the messaging out to people to go vote early. Anywhere we can have volunteers signing up, I want to be loud and clear to invite volunteers to help with this campaign, because it is so vital and so important. So I think whenever people hear the messaging over and over again, ultimately it will stick with them. We have to get people early voting. We have to get people to door knock and legally ballot harvest everywhere where it is legal. So I think my role will be pretty large in terms of communicating those things with people so they know how to do it and what it all means.”
Obviously, this move to elect Whatley and Lara Trump to lead the RNC comes in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump becoming the presumptive nominee for the third straight presidential election. While Trump won almost every contest this cycle, he did face several intra-party challengers, and now the process of unifying the party behind him is in full swing after Trump knocked out his last remaining challenger on Super Tuesday. Whatley told Breitbart News it is Trump who is unifying the GOP, and quickly.
“It is Donald Trump who is going to bring this entire party together,” Whatley said. “If you got a chance to see the room here today at the RNC, it was absolutely and completely unified. We are ready to go. This committee is absolutely ready to go. We are unified behind Donald Trump. We are going to work all day every day hand in glove with his campaign and make sure we are going to get out the vote and protect the ballot. I see absolutely no issues whatsoever when it comes to party unity coming out of this primary. It is time for everybody to recognize we have a fantastic candidate. We have 241 days to do [it]. We have a lot of work to do. But everybody is ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work.”
Lara Trump added that the new RNC leadership will be regularly working with grassroots conservatives—it’s particularly important that they chose to do their first interview with Breitbart News—as she and Whatley settle into their roles. She made clear, of course, that she is a member of the Trump family and understands how important the grassroots are to her father-in-law winning.
“The grassroots is so important I think. We can’t run without grassroots support either,” she said. “So, they should feel very, very confident that the RNC is here for them. We want to work with them. This is how we’re going to do it in November. We need to have great people out there. So, we’re going to be reaching out and doing that as well. You got a Trump here and so there’s no doubt I’m in it for that reason as well. We’re going to make sure everyone is very comfortable and that this is an entity that is 100 percent on board for Donald Trump, for expanding the House, and taking back the Senate.”
Their election also comes the morning after Biden’s third State of the Union address, where an angry Democrat president yelled at Republicans in Congress and demonized Trump at least 13 times on Thursday evening, while pushing a radical and extreme leftist agenda and repeatedly lying, as a variety of fact checks have proven. Whatley said the angry and divisive speech from Biden will only help Republicans at the RNC draw a contrast with Trump.
“I would say that Donald Trump versus Joe Biden is going to be an amazing contrast for us every single day,” Whatley said. “You look at that speech last night and it was, as you say, angry, it was divisive, it was not about building unity in the country. Every time that we have an opportunity to put President Trump up against him, whether it is in their physical stamina and strength right now, whether it is in their records in their respective administrations—you look at the four years under Donald Trump and you look at the four years under Joe Biden—the American people are going to see an amazing contrast and they are going to support Donald Trump and the Republican candidates that are standing with him.”
Lara Trump added that while Democrats are in fact organized and operate a well-oiled machine, the product they are selling—Biden—is “terrible.”
“They may be organized, as you say, but it’s not enough to have a great marketing department if your product is terrible,” she said. “What they’re trying to sell the American people is terrible. Everybody has felt the negative impacts of Joe Biden and Democrats being in charge of this country. They’re almost a great salesperson for us because, as Chairman Whatley just said,, you have such a drastic contrast between how life was when Donald Trump was president. That’s the beauty of it: They know how life will be and understand what it’s like when Trump is president. We don’t have to sell that, they already know. They are making the case for us every single day with how high prices are and everything, with the open southern border, with the destabilizing of the entire world at this point. It may be that they’re organized, but the fact that you had Joe Biden give a State of the Union address as president of the United States in an election year when he could not point to anything solid that has gone well for the American people or lay out a vision for the future and instill any kind of confidence in anyone. We have a great product and we don’t even have to sell it, because the American people are hungry to get Donald Trump back.”
