Some officials with the Republican National Committee refused to vote for Donald Trump's re-election, according to a new book.
Fox News obtained excerpts from the forthcoming book, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost," by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender, which showed intra-party friction between RNC chair Ronna McDaniel and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien.
"By 2020, the RNC wasn't merely an extension of the Trump campaign," Bender reported. "[Stepien's predecessor] Brad Parscale had effectively turned them into a full partner, and Ronna had become one of the president's closest advisers. The RNC was paying for the field staff. They were covering costs for state directors who couldn't get calls returned from campaign headquarters. Even the lease for the campaign headquarters was being paid for by the RNC."
Stepien, however, did not have such close ties to the RNC.
"Friction remained from the 2016 race between Stepien and much of Ronna's senior leadership team," Bender reported. "Ronna was running the Michigan Republican Party during that race, but Stepien disapproved of her decision to keep many of those same RNC staffers in her orbit."
That often left McDaniel, who had been tapped by Trump to run the RNC in 2017, left out of the loop.
"Ronna was often left on the outside looking in — sometimes literally," Bender reported. "In June, she had arrived at the White House for a political meeting, but waited in the lobby for more than an hour before she was brought into the Oval. When she walked in, the president asked why she was so late. 'They don't want me sitting in the meetings with you,' Ronna told him."
Bender writes that Stepien was correct to question the loyalty of McDaniels' staff to the twice-impeached one-term president, although the RNC disputed his claims.
"The president's handling of Covid and the White House's treatment of Ronna had top staffers inside the RNC openly musing — for the first time in their lives — about not voting for the Republican nominee for president," Bender reported. "Ultimately, some did not cast their Election Day ballot for Trump."
