Association members Republican National Committeein a vote that was never in doubt, on Friday he re-elected chairman Michael Whatley to continue running the party’s national committee.
“This organization has to be the tip of the spear. And as your president, I pledge that this organization will be the tip of the spear to protect Donald Trump,” Whatley said, speaking after a unanimous vote at the annual RNC. a meeting that this year was held in the capital before the inauguration on Monday President-elect Trump.
Whatley, a longtime Trump ally and big supporter of Trump’s election integrity efforts who served as RNC general counsel and chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, was named by Trump last March as chairman when the former president won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination . Whatley succeeded longtime RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who Trump no longer endorsed.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the RNC Winter Meeting, Whatley says his job moving forward in the 2025 election and 2026 midterms is very simple.
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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley was unanimously re-elected at the RNC Winter Meeting in Washington DC on January 17, 2025. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
“It’s really critical for us to make sure that Trump voters become Republican voters,” Whatley told Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the RNC’s winter meeting in the capital.
Republicans enjoyed big wins in the November election, with President-elect Trump overwhelming Vice President Kamala Harris will win back the White House, the GOP wrested control of the Senate from Democrats and retained its razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.
Whatley, who was interviewed Thursday ahead of the formal RNC chair vote, said the GOP needs to “cement those gains” made in the 2024 election.
“We’re going to go back to the fundamentals we’ve had throughout this election cycle, which is getting out and protecting the ballot,” Whatley emphasized.
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley gives the gavel to order the Republican National Convention on Monday, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The RNC chairman pointed to the “lessons we’ve learned” in the cycle 2024 “about going after low-propensity voters, about reaching every voter and bringing in new communities,” which, he said, helped Republicans make “historic gains among African-American voters, among Asian-American voters, among Hispanic voters, young voters and voter.”
Speaking days before the president-elect’s inauguration, Whatley stressed that once Trump is in the White House, “we’re going to get right back to the RNC. We’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We’ve got a couple of gubernatorial races…to work on in ’25 .”
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But Whatley said “everything is focused on ’26,” when the party will defend its House and Senate majorities, “because that will determine, from an agenda perspective, whether we have two years to work or four. And America needs to we have a four-year program.”
“What we’re going to do is make sure we register voters,” Whatley said. “We will…communicate with the people we need to evict.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Whatley is interviewed by Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the RNC Winter Meeting January 16, 2025 in Washington DC (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Pointing to the presidential elections in 2024, he said that “these are the same basics”.
But he noted that “it’s not just seven states on the battlefield” and that the 2026 election “will definitely be a very intense midterm election cycle.”
Although Democrats would disagree, Whatley described today’s GOP as “the party of common sense…this is the party that will fight for every American family and for every American community.”
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Speaking about former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsa Gabbard, whom Trump has nominated to serve in his second administration’s cabinet, Whatley noted “the fact that we have two former Democratic presidential candidates serving in the president’s cabinet shows you that this is a common sense plan, a common sense team, with which we will move forward.”
In December, Trump asked Whatley to continue as RNC chair through the 2026 cycle.
“I think we’ll be able to talk when we need to talk,” Whatley said when asked if his lines of communication with Trump would be limited now that the president-elect is back in the White House. “We will support the president and his agenda. That doesn’t change. What does change is his ability from the White House to actually implement the agenda that he campaigned on.”
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The winter meeting included Co-President Lara Trump’s last appearance at the RNC. The newly elected president’s daughter-in-law is stepping down.
She emphasized that it is critical that the RNC take advantage of the “opportunity the voters have given us” to “continue to expand the Republican brand.”
The elder Trump is term-limited and will not be able to run for re-election in 2028. Vice President-elect, Senator JD Vance likely to be considered a front-runner for the 2028 GOP nomination.
Vice President-elect JD Vance, left, and President-elect Trump, during an election night celebration at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Whatley reiterated what he told Fox News Digital in December, that the RNC would remain neutral in the next race for the GOP nomination and that the party “has an incredible bench.”
“Think about the talent on the Republican side of the aisle right now, our governors, our senators, our members of Congress, the people who are going to serve in this administration. I love the fact that the Republican Party is going to be positioned to have a fantastic candidate going into ’28, ” he pointed out.
Unlike the DNC, which in the 2024 cycle overthrew the traditional calendar of presidential nominations, The RNC made no major changes to its primary lineup, keeping the Iowa primary and New Hampshire primary as its first two contests.
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Asked about the 2028 calendar, Whatley reiterated to Fox News that “I haven’t had any conversations with anybody who wants to change the calendar, so we’ll wait and see what that looks like going forward. We’re at the RNC meeting this week and a lot of conversations with people, but it’s not a lot of pressure.”
“I don’t think the calendar change actually helped the Democrats at all,” Whatley argued. “And I think making sure our system works the way we’ve always done is going to be critical for us.”
