𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐝

“You look at the election integrity issues of 2020 and ask who is responsible for maintaining that integrity and it would have to fall back on the RNC, which raised about $900 million this last election cycle and appears not to have been sufficiently involved, before the election, during the election, or after the election in contesting it,” Michael Johns, the co-founder of the National Tea Party movement, told The Epoch Times.

“It’s incredible to me that we’ve had to rely on an American entrepreneur who owns a pillow company and on a very bright trade adviser … to take up the arguments that you would think, logically, would be made by the RNC,” Johns added, referring to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Peter Navarro, Trump’s director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

A week after the CPAC speech, a Trump adviser confirmed to The Epoch Times that the president sent cease-and-desist letters demanding that the RNC, the NRSC, and the NRCC stop using his name and likeness. Calls placed to the three committees went unanswered.

As of the morning of March 7, the NRCC was still using Trump’s name in its standard messaging for new email list registrations. The home page of the NRSC advertised Trump t-shirts from its online shop.

Setting up a war chest of his own will allow Trump to spend money against Republican incumbents who would otherwise receive the backing of the RNC. That includes Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who is the only Republican senator running for re-election in 2022 of the seven who voted to convict Trump during the second impeachment trial, which concluded with the Senate acquitting Trump. The former president issued a statement on March 6 vowing to campaign against Murkowski, who is serving her third term.

There is no precedent in modern politics of the RNC backing a primary challenger against a Republican incumbent, according to Johns, the National Tea Party movement co-founder. Johns said the RNC has not been meaningfully aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Agenda (MAGA) and, over the past four years has often backed primary opponents against pro-MAGA candidates. As a result, the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump would have been running for re-election with money the RNC raised using the president’s name.

“He ran to overhaul and save the country, but also to overhaul and save the Republican Party that was not addressing some of the core issues of the time, like China, trade, immigration, in a forceful enough way, and was relying on professional consultants, had become very insular, was not engaged in building the party out in much of a populist way,” Johns said.

“Four years later, that largely continues to be the case. The party operations, the party leadership are not completely Trump-driven. And it only makes sense that if the donor intent is to support President Trump’s 2024 candidacy, potentially, or whether it’s to support candidates that are Trump-aligned in 2022, that you would donate through his vehicles directly and not to the party, which is going to continue to back, for instance, these 10 House members who voted for his impeachment,” he added. “The president’s initiatives are sensible, and perhaps even overdue.”

Aside from Murkowski, five establishment GOP senators will not run for re-election in 2022, including two who voted to convict Trump during the Senate trial, Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). The retirements, coupled with Trump’s fundraising stratagem, open the field for Trump to fundamentally reshape the Senate by backing candidates aligned with his America First platform.

Trump will also be able to invest in the primary challenge against Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who issued a scathing statement against him before voting in favor of impeaching him.

213 viewsDeanne Santini, 20:20