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 veteran reporter Michael Bender, and as we’ve seen with some of the other excerpts that have been released, this one is revealing, too, as it describes the infighting between top Trump campaign and GOP officials during 2020 election. According to the book, some Republican National Committee (RNC) officials didn’t vote for then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
According to the outlet, the excerpts highlight the alleged friction between RNC chair Ronna McDaniel and Bill Stepien, who took over as Trump’s reelection campaign manager last summer.
“By 2020, the RNC wasn’t merely an extension of the Trump campaign. (2020 campaign manager) 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,” Bender wrote.
There was a lot of drama after longtime Trump political adviser Bill Stepien replaced Brad Parscale as campaign manager.
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“One major change when Stepien took over as campaign manager was the reelection campaign’s relationship with the Republican National Committee. Friction remained from the 2016 race between Stepien and much of Ronna’s senior leadership team. 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,” according to the excerpts.
According to the book, under Stepien, “Ronna was often left on the outside looking in—sometimes literally. 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 and dedication of Ronna’s staff to Trump. 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. Ultimately, some did not cast their Election Day ballot for Trump.”
What a hot mess. The RNC disputed the book’s claims to Fox News.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
