Asshole of the Month: Ronna McDaniel

Both the Republican and Democratic parties are governed, at least officially, by a chairperson. And party primaries can be as bruising as the general election, so the party chairperson is supposed to remain neutral, like a courtroom judge, favoring no candidates over others for the various nominations. But that’s not the way it worked with Ronna McDaniel, the longest-serving Republican National Committee chairperson since the Civil War—handpicked by Trump to replace Reince Priebus in December 2017. She paid Trump back by turning the whole party into his personal campaign juggernaut for seven years, all other candidates be damned.

Ronna got her fat foot in the door because she’s Republican royalty: the granddaughter of George Romney, governor of Michigan in the 1960s, who fathered Mitt Romney, current senator from Utah and Presidential candidate in 2012; he lost that race to Barack Obama. So Ronna is Mitt’s niece—a GOP nepo baby. Thanks in part to granddaddy’s governorship of the state, she was hired as chairman of the Michigan Republican Party in 2015 before Trump promoted her to national chairperson two years later, under one condition: She had to stop referring to herself as Ronna Romney McDaniel, because uncle Mitt had dissed Trump as a “con man” and “a fake.” So, given the choice between ditching the honorable maiden name that got her into the political game, or brown-nosing godfather Trump, she chose the latter. Ronna denies this quid pro quo, but The Washington Post reported it and stands by the story. Once in the chair position, she conducted a purge of Republicans who had failed to support Trump—like Wendy Day, a grassroots vice chair, who got the axe for insufficient loyalty to the Donald.

Ronna’s been Trump’s butt-kissing bitch ever since. Leading up to the 2020 election, her effusive praise of Trump went from toady to full-blown ass kisser. In 2018, she started running ads for Trump’s reelection campaign; put Trump loyalists on the RNC’s payroll; covered Trump’s legal fees during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election; and hosted Trump’s “Fake News Awards,” which insulted journalists in this country not employed by the sycophantic Fox network. In 2019, to her chagrin, Uncle Mitt went off the reservation again, writing a Washington Post editorial condemning her idol: “The Trump Presidency made a deep descent in December [when Trump called America a “sucker” in international relations]…. On balance, his conduct over the past two years…is evidence that the President has not risen to the mantle of the office…. A President should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect…. I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”