Trump ally withdraws plan for a GOP resolution to move past Haley

One of Donald Trump’s key allies inside the Republican National Committee withdrew a planned resolution to try to force the party’s official body to say that the GOP presidential nominating contest is effectively over, even though only two states have voted and Nikki Haley has vowed to continue her campaign against the dominant front-runner.

David Bossie, an RNC committee member from Maryland and a longtime Trump confidant, had proposed a draft resolution proclaiming Trump the party’s “presumptive” nominee, according to two people with direct knowledge of his role in the effort.

But he withdrew the plan to push the resolution after Trump posted on his Truth Social website that he did not want such a measure.

“While I greatly appreciate the Republican National Committee (RNC) wanting to make me their PRESUMPTIVE NOMINEE, and while they have far more votes than necessary to do it, I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan, but that I should do it the ‘Old Fashioned’ way, and finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX,” he wrote.

Bossie previewed his plan in an interview with television host Chris Cuomo on NewsNation after Trump won the New Hampshire primary Tuesday.

“Donald Trump is the apparent nominee at this point,” Bossie said, adding that he would bring up the issue at the RNC’s meeting next week in Las Vegas. “It’s over and it is time for us to come together.”

The resolution would have had no practical effect on the primary elections taking place, which are run at the state level by local officials, some of whom are RNC members but are required by state party rules to remain neutral. Resolutions such as Bossie’s do not force the RNC to do anything or change the process for how candidates accrue delegates.

Still, there may be a number of people who likely wanted to back the resolution, in a symbolic show of support for Trump. And it could have given cover to the committee to start moving formally to back him in a general election, as Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, faces pressure from a number of Republican officials to end her candidacy.

The news website The Dispatch first reported on the resolution. The document, which was independently obtained by The New York Times, states, in part, that “the Republican National Committee hereby declares President Trump as our presumptive 2024 nominee for the office of President of the United States and from this moment forward moves into full general election mode welcoming supporters of all candidates as valued members of Team Trump 2024.”

Asked how the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, planned to respond to the Bossie resolution, an RNC spokesperson, Keith Schipper, said that McDaniel did not bring forward resolutions, but that members of the RNC did.

Bossie’s resolution “will be taken up by the Resolutions Committee,” Schipper said earlier in the day, “and they will decide whether to send this resolution to be voted on by the 168 RNC members at our annual meeting next week.”

Bossie, who did not respond to requests for comment, had overseen the debates committee for the RNC. A top adviser for the Trump campaign, Chris LaCivita, declined to comment on the resolution.

The Trump campaign is desperate to end the primary contest as soon as possible to conserve resources for an expected billion-dollar-plus general-election clash with President Joe Biden. Trump is also facing mounting legal fees and the potential for multiple trials before the election. Senior Trump advisers are eager to take control of the RNC and its treasury, even before its July nominating convention, in Milwaukee, when the nominee will be officially voted on.

In the GOP contest, Trump leads Haley in delegates, 32-17.

In response to the push to declare Trump the presumptive nominee, Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokesperson for the Haley campaign, said in a statement: “Who cares what the RNC says? We’ll let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who should be our party’s nominee, not a bunch of Washington insiders.”

This week, McDaniel put her own thumb on the scale for Trump, after his 11-point win over Haley in New Hampshire.

“I think there is a message from the voters which is clear: We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump,” McDaniel told Fox News on Tuesday night.

Her comments infuriated Haley supporters, including New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who described her remarks as “nonsense.”

McDaniel has been under intense pressure from several influential figures on the right, including former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who have portrayed her as out of touch with the Trump movement, and have criticized election losses during her tenure and depleted RNC finances.

Until New Hampshire, McDaniel had presented herself as neutral in the nominating contest, though her close personal relationship with Trump had raised suspicions among some of the former president’s rivals.

Trump’s top aides had been urging McDaniel, both publicly and privately, to put an early end to Republican primary debates, a move she had resisted.

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