Donald Trump has fully captured the Republican National Committee and stacked its leadership with allies and family members, much to the disappointment of some longtime GOP activists.
Al Cárdenas has twice led Florida's Republican Party, served on the RNC's executive committee, and chaired the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual CPAC event, but he told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he barely recognizes the national GOP organization after the MAGA takeover.
"They fired over 90 people," Cárdenas said. "They're moving a small squad to integrate with a presidential campaign by name only. They're concentrating on lawyers and election fraud. We did that in Florida. We created a very same mechanism they're trying to do nationally. You know, what we did, we ended up with three arrests, all Republicans in the small village of the Villages, a retirement community. This is nonsense, I mean, it's only spending millions to perpetuate the fallacy that there was election fraud in 2020. That's all, that's all it is, but, you know, replacing the RNC and what it does, to me, I've given it 40 years of my life. It breaks my heart. It takes away a major component of getting your communities involved in the political process, and now it's all going to be dictated from the top, and you wonder what our future will be down the ballot."
Trump pushed out former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel and installed his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair in charge or fundraising, and the organization raised eyebrows this week by hiring former Newsmax anchor and election conspiracist Christina Bobb as head of election integrity.
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"Now the RNC is run by Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, and Christina Bobb, irony and shame officially died when she was hired as the head of election integrity," said co-host Willie Geist. "One of the chief conspiracy theorists about the 2020 election, in fact, was in that infamous war room on the eve of Jan. 6 at the Willard Hotel with Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. Larger question to you, what are Republicans like you and Joe [Scarborough] and the ones I've known my whole life growing up to do at this moment? Reagan Republicans, George W. Bush, H.W. Bush, McCain, Romney, go all the way up the line, small-government, low-tax conservatives, where is the home for them in American politics right now?"
Cárdenas wasn't sure, but he said he's not going anywhere for now.
"Some have left, some have stayed," Cárdenas said. "You know, we're doing something for Liz Cheney soon. My wife ['The View' co-host Ana Navarro] is going to be introducing her at a book event here just to bring back, if nothing else, the memory of a sane party and my -- look, Michael Steele with your MSNBC team, he and I served together at the RNC. He shares the same, you know, concerns that I do, this is a very sad time for us. It's a very sad time for what I consider to be, you know, a two-party system in America. It's a very sad time for democracy at its best. It's a very sad time for getting rid of -- I for one am not leaving. I'm here to stay and try to consider this a cycle that will leave us eventually, but in my opinion, it does us no service."
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