Atlanta (AP) -Amy Kremer was an early Tea party manager who supported Donald Trump for the president in 2016. In 2017 she ran for the congress from Georgia and received less than 1% of the republican primary votes.
In 2021 she organized the rally near the White House, the hours before hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the US capitol to protest his loss against Democrat Joe Biden.
When the voters Trump brought back to power in 2024, Kremer dropped a conservative stalwart to become a Republican National Committee member. This week in Atlanta she used this post to choose a fresh party chairman Joe Gruders from Florida. He is another original Trump supporter, which was described by the President as a “Maga Warrior” -an indication of the movement “Make America Great Again”.
“I never thought that I would sit here for something like that,” said Kremer. “It’s Donald Trump’s party now.”
Sit president usually choose their national party leaders. But today’s RNC shows with basic activists such as Kremer and a leader in Gruders how much the Republicans have changed from the Grand Old Party controlled by the establishment and now reflect Trump and his populist nationalism.
Almost a dozen interviews with RNC members found an affinity for the president, who described them as deeper than for his predecessors. They insist that Trump’s fresh formation of the economy, the federal government and the role of America are overdue in the world, and they are confident that his political struggles will not make the party fail in the 2026 interim elections.
She describes a seamless relationship between the White House and the party machinery and as better than during Trump’s first term. Perhaps above all, they argued that “America first” the Republicans and the Maga identity are not only about Trump’s charismatic branding, but also about evidence of a movement that intends to do before his presidency.
“If you see the employees of the working class who bought it, it was real. It wasn’t a fly at night,” said the Republican chairman of Nevada, Michael McDonald. “Donald Trump brought something with him that the party had to wake up, and he did it. And it never goes back.”
Trump did not start as a republican party man
Kremer took her RNC seat when the party was convened in Milwaukee at the 2024 convention. She was one of almost four dozen fresh members of the 168 seats. Another 21 fresh members joined the Committee in Atlanta.
“It’s all Maga,” she said.
Nevadas McDonald was elected in 2011 and is today the longest reigning chairman of the Republican State Party. He laughed when he was asked for party dynamics after Trump’s first campaign and presidency.
“We had people in the Republican Party who thrown murmurs at our feet,” said McDonald, who was charged as a counterfeit voter after the 2020 elections who were accused of keeping Trump in the White House, even after he had lost Nevada through bidges. A judge in Nevada rejected the case last year.
Trump’s second -term Foreign Minister Marco Rubio was a Senator of Florida and one of Trump’s main rivals in 2016. In this campaign, Rubio described the potential president as “fraudst”. At the GOP Convention this year, another candidate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, beat by expressly supporting Trump.
Trump’s initial violation of the party seemed to be liability after defeating the democrat Hillary Clinton. As an outsider in Washington, he only had no choice but to build a west wing and executive branch, which included many Republicans who were not true believers.
His first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, headed the RNC, while Trump ran for the president and dealt with GOP -Macht players who wanted to block Trump’s nomination. Trump’s first RNC chairman was Ronna Romney McDaniel, niece of the GOP candidate Mitt Romney 2012, who had publicly warned against Trump’s election.
In office, Trump was based on his ability to control news cycles and stories. He largely ignored the party mechanics and was not closely involved in the meantime for 2018 when the Democrats took back a US majority.
New Trump-friendly faces appeared anyway
Despite his apparent deployment, people near Trump laid long -term foundations.
McDonald said that loyalists Steven Bannon, David Bossie, Susie Wiles, the current chief of staff of the White House, helped to build state infrastructure and recruit candidates for the management of the state party, RNC seats and down-ballot offices.
Other newcomers appeared alone and inspired by Trump.
“I speak for an entire generation that was frustrated by the status quo and was politically correct,” said John Wahl, the chairman of the Alabama party. In 2021 he became the youngest GOP chairman in the nationwide at the age of 34.
Elected the successor of Terry Lathan, who was a committed party soldier for candidates, which ranged from moderate such as Arizona Senator John McCain to accident accidents such as Trump. But in 2023, when she was out of office and was free to choose a GOP presidential candidate, she supported Florida Governor Ron Desantis via Trump. Lathan did not take part in Trump’s nomination convention of 2024 in Milwaukee.
Bryan Miller, who was elected by the Wyoming Republican Party this year, supported Trump in the 2016 primary elections, not long after Miller retired from the Air Force and joined his leadership of the district’s GOP committee. He remembers the attack on the Capitol, which he observed the most eminent Republican of his state, then the US MP Liz Cheney, examined the house committee, which examined January 6, 2021. She approved the democrat Kamala Harris on Trump in 2024.
Miller said that he hadn’t believed if he had been told a state chairman a decade ago and that Liz Cheney, daughter of a former Vice President Dick Cheney, would be undesirable among the Republicans of Wyoming.
“America first” unit overwrites any disa
Grief
The loyalty to Trump does not mean that the Republicans have a complete harmony.
Evan Power, chairman of the Florida GOP and a former Rubio adjutant, agreed that some Republicans still prefer conservative orthodoxy for global trade and international alliances. But he said Trump talked to the anger of voters about an uneven economy, and Trump’s confrontational approach to other nations does not differ from the execution of the president of domestic politics.
“Now people know that his combative combat style wins the elections,” said Power.
Miller showed troops on the streets of the Columbia district and recognized questions about the employ of armed military power to monitor an American city.
“I agree – as long as we remain within the limits of the law, as it is set up”, so that the military personnel is “only in supporting roles”, he said.
Kremer, who once lambbles President Barack Obama’s health overhaul as a budget, said she knew that the fresh tax breaks and spending cuts in Trump should add trillion dollars to the nation’s debt.
“There is no other person who would deport the illegal and close the border,” she said. “They are a chance costs. You know that it will spend more. I don’t agree, but I know that you can’t have everything.”
Trump himself has learned part of the same pragmatism that deals with the party.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump pushed McDaniel out of the RNC. He typed the daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Michael Whatley from North Carolina as party co-chair. Well, Whatley is Trump’s choice for the US Senate in North Carolina, and Gruders leads the RNC.
Vice President JD Vance leads the finals of the RNC in an unusually high -ranking connection between the White House and the party’s donation.
And with almost every fresh turnover in the party’s organizational card, the scales continue to tap in Trump’s direction.
“He was in exile for four years and thought about what he could have done better,” said Power, the Florida chairman, “and he performs all cylinders.”
