Republicans having 'one of the worst years we've ever seen' financially: GOP committeeman

Republicans are admitting that the party is in trouble financially, and it's reportedly spilling into talks of putting Donald Trump in charge.

The former president previously considered his 2024 run would be as an independent, but now the Republican party itself is considering putting him as their front man to help with fundraising, according to a report from the New York Times.

"In early 2021, when former President Donald J. Trump was unhappily exiting the White House, he suggested in a private conversation with Ronna McDaniel, the head of the Republican National Committee, the possibility of running for the White House again in 2024, not as a Republican but as a third-party candidate," the report states. "Mr. Trump quickly scrapped the idea. Three years later, the rest is nearly history. After his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire last month, Mr. Trump is on the precipice of again becoming the Republican Party’s official standard-bearer."

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According to the article, Trump has won over party members who were once skeptical. And at a recent meeting, the discussion turned to Trump's role and McDaniel's fate.

"Despite a sometimes fraught history — most party insiders were leery of Mr. Trump when he first won the Republican nomination in 2016 — the former president and his party are now largely aligned, a sign of how much Republicanism has transformed in the last eight years," the outlet reported. "As members of the Republican National Committee gathered in Las Vegas this week for their winter meeting, the looming remarriage of the party apparatus with Mr. Trump generated only the smallest pockets of resistance. Instead, much of the drama and discussion on the sidelines was about how Mr. Trump would seek to put his imprint on the party’s leadership."

According to the report, Trump and others have started to doubt the R.N.C.'s direction under McDaniel, who claims the issues are party-wide and not a problem with her. But not all see it that way.

"'This is one of the worst years that we’ve ever seen,' said Tyler Bowyer, the Republican committeeman from Arizona, who has been a McDaniel critic," the article states. "'Given the financial circumstances that the Republican Party is in, top to bottom, having the Trump campaign lead on the front of that merger makes a ton of sense.'"

Read the article here (subscription required).