The Republican National Committee will meet behind closed doors this week. Some allies of Donald Trump had hoped the Republican National Committee would endorse the former president early in the campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
But party officials said the resolution declaring Trump a potential nominee was taken off the table ahead of a committee meeting scheduled for this week in Las Vegas.
The reversal comes as the first two interstate races have narrowed the Republican field to two leading candidates, with Trump the frontrunner and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley vowing to mount a difficult challenge. It happened inside.
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This week’s RNC winter meeting in Las Vegas was expected to go off without incident, but Maryland state commissioner David Bossie introduced a resolution naming Trump as the prospective nominee. When it was announced last week, it temporarily gained attention.
Bossie served as President Trump’s deputy campaign manager in 2016, advising the Trump campaign as Congress moved forward with its second impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Within hours of the resolution’s leak, President Trump condemned the proposal, which some members of the committee publicly criticized as premature.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel speaks before the Republican presidential primary debate hosted by NBC News in Miami on November 8, 2023. The RNC will convene behind closed doors in Las Vegas this week. They will no longer consider a resolution declaring former President Donald Trump the Republican nominee. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
“They have more votes than they need, but I don’t think they should go ahead with this plan for the sake of party unity,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
There are no formal RNC rules prohibiting the party from declaring a presumptive candidate. And there is precedent for such a move. In 2016, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared Trump the presumptive nominee after the Indiana primary, but that was in May and Trump finished second in the leadoff Iowa caucuses. Since winning first place, he has been in a three-month battle with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Mr. Trump.
The Associated Press will only use the term if a candidate wins the number of delegates needed to win a majority of votes at this summer’s national party convention.
That point won’t happen until more states vote. For both Republicans and Democrats, that won’t happen until March at the earliest.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said last week that given Trump’s majority vote total in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, Haley He suggested there was no path to nomination.
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“We need to unite around the ultimate nominee, Donald Trump, and we need to make sure we beat Joe Biden,” McDaniel said in an interview on Fox News on the night of the New Hampshire primary. ” he said.
Haley appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday and said that if you’re going to go and tell the American people that you’re going to decide who the nominee is, the RNC is “clearly not an ‘honest broker.’ No,” he said. This was after only two states had voted. ”
“The American people want to have a say in who the nominee is,” she said. “We have to give it to them. I mean, we can’t do it on the basis of just two states.”
