RNC chairman Ronna McDaniel sat down for an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller this week to discuss the three year anniversary of Donald Trump announcing his candidacy for president and GOP hopes for the 2018 midterms.
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Exactly three years ago — June 16, 2015 — Donald Trump announced that he was running for president after a short ride down the New York Trump Tower escalator.
McDaniel, who was serving as the chair of the Michigan Republican Party when Trump announced, told TheDC that she was determined to meet with every Republican candidate for president during the primary process and convince them that they could take her state. Trump, she claims, is the only one who was adamant about winning the state and creating a new coalition of Republican voters.
“When Donald Trump came to our state and I sat with him there were two things that I noticed that were different about him from every other candidate: one, he recognized the wisdom from the people on the ground…and two, he was determined to defy odds and do things differently,” McDaniel said. “So we showed up in Michigan over and over again, he had a message that resonated, and that was why we won Michigan for the first time since 1988 with President Trump.”
Trump tapped McDaniel to run for RNC chair after the election, and three years later McDaniel is working on keeping a Republican majority in the House and Senate during the 2018 midterm elections. Historically, parties that control the executive branch don’t perform well in midterm elections, but McDaniel is determined to reverse that trend.
“A year and a half into this presidency when you look at record unemployment, when you look at jobs coming to this country, right now we have more job openings in this country than we have people available to fill them. This is a great time for America — we have to protect this comeback,” she explained.
“Our job at the RNC is to create that urgency in our voters, get them to turn out to vote, and make sure we can win in the midterms and we’re doing that across the country and I feel really good about the position we’re in a few months out,” she added. (RELATED: Trump Celebrates California Primary Wins: ‘So Much For Blue Wave’)
Regarding the predictions about a “blue wave,” McDaniel argued that the economic gains made under Trump and the GOP-led tax cuts should inspire voters to keep Republicans in office. (RELATED: Everyone Talking About A ‘Blue Wave’ In November Should See These Latest Poll Numbers For Democrats)
“Media and Democrats have embraced this theory of the ‘blue wave’ and they’re conveniently neglecting what’s happening across this country, this economic wave that’s lifting up so many families who have more money to pay for gas, who have more money to pay for their kid’s education,” McDaniel argued. “I think that blue wave is gonna be a ripple and we’re gonna make sure that we keep those majorities but it can’t come through complacency.”
The RNC is instituting one major plan today on the third anniversary of Trump’s campaign announcement: a National Day of Action. State teams will host 225 simultaneous trainings for volunteers before heading out to door-knock, and the RNC hopes to activate “an additional 2,000 top-tier volunteers on just Saturday alone.”
