Who is Rona McDaniel? denounces QAnon, White supremacy, Biography, Wiki
Ronna Romney McDaniel (born March 20, 1973) is an American political strategist serving as Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) since 2017. A member of the Republican Party and the Romney family, she was Chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 2015 to 2017.
A granddaughter of Michigan Governor and businessman George W. Romney and niece of U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, as RNC Chair, she has been known for her prolific fundraising and staunch support for President Donald Trump. Under her leadership, the RNC ran ads for Trump’s 2020 campaign as early as 2018, put numerous Trump campaign workers and affiliates on the RNC payroll, spent considerable funds at Trump-owned properties, covered his legal fees in the Russian interference investigation, hosted Trump’s Fake News Awards, and criticized Trump critics within the Republican Party. After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump refused to concede, McDaniel and the RNC pushed falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the election.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Rona McDaniel denounced extremist groups, namely QAnon, Sunday by saying members are not welcome in the GOP following the Capitol insurrection, but also argued Democrats have not done as much to call out Antifa.
Appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” McDaniel was asked to respond to recent remarks by Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., who said it was important for Republicans to make it clear that they are not the party of White supremacy. Cheney was one of just 10 Republican House members to vote to impeach Trump a second time following the Capitol riot.
“Will you make that clear now?” CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan asked Sunday.
“100 percent,” McDaniel responded. “We passed a resolution unanimously from the RNC members three years ago saying we condemn White supremacy, antisemitism, KKK and I’m going to add QAnon to that. They are not welcome in our party.”
.@GOPChairwoman: “100 percent,” when pressed on making clear the @GOP is not the party of white supremacy@margbrennan points out those who sieged the US Capitol carried Trump flags pic.twitter.com/VpJiehYZaj
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 28, 2021
“I have not seen Democrats do that with Louis Farrakhan, who calls the Jewish people termites, I have not seen them do that with Antifa who last night committed violence again in Portland,” McDaniel pivoted, accusing Democrats of failing to act against leftist extremists.
“The Democrats have created a safe haven for Antifa. They have not denounced them,” she said. “Nancy Pelosi said that for cities being ripped apart ‘people will do what they do.’ You can’t hold Republicans to one standard and not Democrats: that creates unrest as well.”
The Justice Department announced Friday that over 300 individuals have been charged in connection with the events in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, and over 280 have been arrested.
“How damaging were the events of January 6th to your party?” Brennan asked.
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“They were damaging to our country,” McDaniel said. “I think it was horrific what happened on January 6th. There is no American, Republican or Democrat that looks at that and sees our Capitol attacked and feels good. And I think there is a lot of self-reflection that has to go across the whole country.”
How damaging was the Jan. 6 insurrection on the US capitol to the @GOP?@GOPChairwoman to @margbrennan: “They were damaging to our country”
But amid party rifts over extremism, McDaniel claims the party has been “more vocal” about #QAnon pic.twitter.com/cE5K7ANSOK
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) February 28, 2021
“What I will say from an RNC perspective is that we’ve been more vocal in denouncing groups like QAnon,” she said. “We know that anarchist came to Washington that day. There was a bomb placed outside of my building, outside of the Republican National Committee. We have a deeply divided nation.”
“I will denounce extreme elements that pretend to be Republican and say that we do not want you in our party,” McDaneil said. “I would like Democrats to do the same with Antifa and groups that are anti-Semitic that masquerade as Democrats and say that you are not welcome in our party as they burn down cities this past summer.”
After Republicans lost control of the Senate and White House, and Democrats held majority in the House, McDaniel also reacted to division within her party over whether former President Trump is the future. She said the matter is up to voters who overwhelmingly agree with what Trump did in office.
“As you see Joe Biden strip away energy independence and cancel the Keystone Pipeline, as you see Joe Biden say I’m going to prioritize opening our borders over opening our schools, opening our economies. When you see the vaccine rollout that started under Operation Warp Speed in less than a year, these are the types of things you’re seeing voters saying they’ve seen in the Trump administration and now they’re seeing the Biden administration strip those things away.”
Early life and education
McDaniel was born Ronna Romney on March 20, 1973 in Austin, Texas. The third of five children born to Ronna Stern Romney and Scott Romney, the older brother of Mitt Romney, McDaniel is a granddaughter of three-term Michigan Governor George W. Romney. Her mother ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996 against Carl Levin, served on the Republican National Committee, and was a delegate to the 1988 Republican National Convention. Romney’s grandmother, Lenore Romney, ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970. McDaniel has said her career in politics was inspired by her family.
She attended Lahser High School in Bloomfield Township, Oakland County, Michigan and earned an undergraduate degree in English from Brigham Young University.
Career
McDaniel worked for SRCP Media as a production manager. She also worked for the production company Mills James as a business manager and as a manager at the staffing firm Ajilon.
McDaniel worked in Michigan for her uncle Mitt’s 2012 campaign for President of the United States. She was elected Michigan’s representative to the Republican National Committee (RNC) in 2014. In 2015, McDaniel ran for chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, receiving support from both the party establishment and Tea Party activists. At the party’s convention in February 2015, she defeated Norm Hughes and Kim Shmina, receiving 55% of the vote in the first ballot. She succeeded Bobby Schostak as chairwoman and stepped down from her position at the RNC.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, McDaniel served as a delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention for Donald Trump. Following the 2016 presidential election, McDaniel became a candidate to chair the Republican National Committee. McDaniel was an early supporter of Donald Trump. McDaniel had activist Wendy Day removed from her party position as grassroots vice-chair due to her refusal to support Trump.
RNC chair
Election as chairman
On November 13, 2016, Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, was announced as the new White House Chief of Staff, thereby turning the RNC chairman election into an open seat election. Soon afterward, several candidates were reported as likely to seek the position, including McDaniel. On December 14, 2016, McDaniel was chosen by then president-elect Trump as his recommendation to replace Priebus. She served as deputy chair before her formal election. She was officially elected as RNC chair on January 19, 2017, becoming the second woman (after Mary Louise Smith) in RNC history to hold the post. According to The Washington Post, Trump requested that she stop using her maiden name, and McDaniel subsequently did not use it in official communications. McDaniel denies that Trump pressured her to change the name.
Importance to Republican Fundraising
As of 2018, McDaniel spends up to six hours daily calling donors. Under McDaniel’s leadership, the RNC had what The Washington Post described as “a huge financial edge heading into the 2018 midterm elections.” As of January 2018, the RNC had almost $40 million banked while the Democratic National Committee had a mere $6.3 million. As of July 17, the Republican National Committee had raised about $213 million for the election cycle with $50.7 million in cash on hand and no debt. The Democratic National Committee raised just $101 million during the same period.
Support for Trump
The New York Times described McDaniel as “unfailingly loyal to Trump.” According to a 2018 study in The Journal of Politics, under her leadership the RNC has sought to consistently promote Trump and his policies. This includes running ads for Trump’s 2020 campaign as early as in 2018, putting a considerable number of Trump campaign workers and affiliates on the RNC payroll, spending considerable funds at Trump-owned properties, covering Trump’s legal fees in the Russian interference investigation, hosting Trump’s “Fake News Awards”, and harshly criticizing Trump critics within the Republican Party. The day after Republican congressman Mark Sanford, known for his criticism of Trump, lost his primary against a pro-Trump candidate, McDaniel tweeted that those who do not embrace Trump’s agenda “will be making a mistake”. In April 2018, McDaniel praised Trump as a “moral leader”.
Politico reported that after Trump endorsed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore just days before the special Alabama Senate election, the White House influenced McDaniel to resume RNC funding for Moore, who lost in a narrow election to Democrat Doug Jones in December 2017. According to two people close to McDaniel, she privately complained about spending time and money on Moore’s behalf. McDaniel was reportedly shocked by Trump’s decision to endorse Moore but felt that she had little choice but to follow the president’s wishes.
In January 2019, Mitt Romney penned an editorial for The Washington Post criticizing President Trump’s moral character. McDaniel said the editorial by her uncle, “an incoming Republican freshman senator”, “feeds into what the Democrats and mainstream media want” and was “disappointing and unproductive.” In March 2019, McDaniel stated she would not support “the nicest, most moral person in the world” to be president if they were not “aligned with [her] politics”.
In May 2019, when House Representative Justin Amash became the first Republican member of Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment, citing the evidence of obstruction of justice in the Mueller Report, McDaniel criticized Amash, saying he was “parroting the Democrats’ talking points on Russia”. While she did not explicitly express support for a primary challenge against Amash, she tweeted, “voters in Amash’s district strongly support this president.”
In September 2020, following the release of audio recordings from February 2020 where President Trump said he was intentionally downplaying the coronavirus, McDaniel defended Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. She said, “history will look back on him well as how he handled this pandemic.”
False claims of fraud in the 2020 election
By May 2020, the RNC had allocated $20 million to oppose Democratic lawsuits to make voting easier during the coronavirus pandemic, in particular expanding vote-by-mail to states that had not adopted it previously. McDaniel accused Democrats of trying to “destroy” and “assault” the integrity of elections. McDaniel said, “a national vote by mail system would open the door to a new set of problems, such as potential election fraud.” According to Deseret News, “Election experts say while voting by mail can be abused, it’s rare and inconsequential.” In general, research has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the United States.
In June 2020, McDaniel shared a RNC video warning about extensive voter fraud in the upcoming 2020 election due to expansions of vote-by-mail related to the coronavirus pandemic. The Washington Post fact-checker wrote that the video “tortures the facts to create a narrative of an election about to be stolen. The illegality being satirized here is a phantom. State election officials, in many cases Republicans, are expanding vote-by-mail as a public health precaution to prevent the risk of spreading the coronavirus — not to rig the outcome.”
After Joe Biden won the 2020 election, McDaniel claimed without evidence that there was large-scale electoral fraud and voter fraud, and had the RNC promote falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the election. At the same time that she was making baseless claims of fraud, President Trump endorsed her to continue to lead the RNC in the January 2021 RNC chair election.
Campaign donations controversies
In October 2017 after Harvey Weinstein, a major donor to the Democratic Party, was accused of sexual abuse, McDaniel said that “returning Weinstein’s dirty money should be a no-brainer”; the Democratic Party did give away some of Weinstein’s contributions. In January 2018, Steve Wynn resigned as RNC finance chairman after he was accused of sexual misconduct and McDaniel came under pressure to return his donations. McDaniel said that Wynn should be allowed “due process” and that his donations would only be returned after the allegations were investigated by the Wynn Resorts board of directors. In May 2019, it was reported that Wynn had donated nearly $400,000 to the national Republican Party, most of it to the RNC, the previous month. In 2017, Wynn and his wife donated $375,000 to the RNC. As of May 2019, none of the money has been returned by the RNC. Steve Wynn has never been convicted of the allegations.
In September 2019, McDaniel asked Doug Manchester, whose nomination to become Ambassador to the Bahamas was stalled in the Senate, for $500,000 in donations to the Republican Party. Manchester responded, noting that his wife had given $100,000 and that his family would “respond” once he was confirmed by the Republican-led Senate to the ambassadorship. CBS News described McDaniel’s action as a “possible pay-for-play scheme” for the ambassadorship.
Other controversies
Under McDaniel’s leadership, the RNC set up a website in April 2018 which attacked and sought to undermine former FBI Director James Comey and called him “Lyin’ Comey”. McDaniel said Comey was a liar and a leaker, and said that the RNC would “make sure the American people understand why he has no one but himself to blame for his complete lack of credibility”.
In late July 2018, McDaniel falsely claimed that Twitter was shadow banning Republicans, including herself. Twitter did not shadowban Republicans, but due to a glitch, several prominent conservative and left-leaning Twitter accounts were not automatically suggested in the site’s drop-down search results. Twitter responded, saying it would fix the bug.
Politico reported in November 2018 that McDaniel called on the Republican candidate Martha McSally to be more aggressive during the ballot counting process in the Arizona Senate race. The Arizona Senate race remained undecided for several days after election night while all ballots were being accounted in a close contest. McSally held a lead by the end of election night, but her lead narrowed over the next few days, as more ballots were counted. Reportedly, the McSally campaign was being pressured from McDaniel for not being aggressive enough.
On May 13, ProPublica reported that big RNC contracts were awarded by McDaniel to companies closely connected to her. Contracts went to her husband’s company and companies that supported her 2015 run for the chairmanship of the Republican Party in Michigan.
On October 18, 2020, McDaniel refused to condemn QAnon on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Personal life
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she has two children with her husband, Patrick McDaniel. They live in Northville, Michigan.
On September 30, 2020, McDaniel tested positive for COVID-19. She and the Republican National Committee disclosed the diagnosis publicly two days later, on October 2. She had been staying at her home in Michigan since September 26 after one of her relatives tested positive.
