In its latest round of eyebrow-raising hires, the Republican National Committee has added a prominent “Stop the Steal” organizer and a former Trump administration official who advocates for Christian nationalism to help craft the party’s increasingly extreme platform.
Ed Martin, an election denier, former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, and current president of the radical Phyllis Schlafly Eagles group, was hired as the deputy policy director of the RNC’s platform committee. Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought joins the cast of extremists as the new policy director on the platform committee.
The new hires are the latest example of Trump’s absolute takeover of the GOP. After getting former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel jettisoned, Trump successfully installed election fraud propagandist Michael Whatley and his meritless daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chairs.
Getting a job at the RNC now requires a blind fealty to Trump and, more importantly, subscribing to the cult-like delusions Trump demands of his subjects. Martin has proven his loyalty through his vocal support of the “Stop the Steal” movement, making a speech at festivities the night before the Jan. 6, insurrection, and marching to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
While there is no evidence that Martin trespassed on the Capitol building that day, he did tweet out some very sketchy statements during the insurrection.
Both of those tweets were sent well after the Capitol building had been breached by rioters. Since the failed coup, Martin has been a vocal conspiracy theorist, according to NBC News.
Martin narrated a video in which he said that an individual he dubbed “Mr. Coffee” had set up gallows outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 for a photo-op, suggesting that perhaps “Mr. Coffee” was working for the federal government. The basis of that claim is that the man goes and gets coffee, walking in the vague, general direction of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Martin titled one blog post on the subject “January 6th was Staged by Mr. Coffee.”
Martin earned himself a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, whose members wanted to question him about his part in managing some of the logistics of that terrible day’s events. Martin was a no-show for his deposition to the committee.
Then there is Vought. Beside being the RNC’s new policy director, Vought is also the president of the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank. The organization’s latest mission is to get Trump to adopt “Christian nationalism” during his next administration.
Martin and Vought are just the latest election deniers to be given positions in the RNC. In April, Arizona Republicans tapped state Sen. Jake Hoffman for a position on the RNC. Hoffman is facing multiple indictments for his part in a “fake electors” scheme surrounding the 2020 election.
Trump is a grifter and his takeover of the GOP, and the RNC in particular, is in service of that grift. Recent polling suggests that Republicans are okay with letting the convicted felon use the RNC as a piggy bank for his legal woes, and GOP politicians seem willing to grovel as low as Trump asks them to.
Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records on May 30. What are potential voters saying about this historic news? And what is the Biden-Harris campaign doing now that the “teflon Don” is no more?
