The Republican National Committee is asking prospective job candidates if they believe the 2020 election was stolen in a “litmus tests of sorts” following the Trump-backed purge of the party committee, according to the Washington Post.
Trump advisers have “quizzed” multiple employees who worked in key 2024 states about their views on the 2020 election, according to the report.
“Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.
The question has “startled” some potential employees who view it as “questioning their loyalty to Trump,” according to the Post.
“If you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” one former RNC employee questioned.
“Candidates who worked on the front line in battleground states or are currently in states where fraud allegations have been prevalent were asked about their work experience,” RNC and Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement to the Post on Tuesday. “We want experienced staff with meaningful views on how elections are won and lost and real experience-based opinions about what happens in the trenches.”
RNC staff was let go en masse in early March but employees could reapply for jobs, and the process has included an interview with Trump advisers.
“The problem with Trumpism is that despite bringing in very smart and very capable people, if you want to play Trump’s game, you have to back him up on everything he says. Claims about the election being stolen is kind of the last frontier of that,” GOP strategist Doug Heye, a former communications direct for the RNC, told the Post.
“This is insane even for a Trumpian RNC,” tweeted Democratic election attorney Marc Elias, who beat back numerous TrumpWorld lawsuits aimed at overturning his 2020 loss. “It means that everyone in the place — every researcher, lawyer, fundraiser, receptionist — is an avowed election denier. How does the Committee ever recover from this? Maybe the answer is it shouldn't.”
“How said,” wrote former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin. “Lying that the election was stolen is now a prerequisite to work at the RNC. A generation of young operatives will have a choice to make: tell the truth or lie.”
Instead of having employees based in D.C., Trump’s advisers have told prospective employees they may be expected to move to Palm Beach, Fla., near the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The process came about after Trump “grew disillusioned” with RNC leadership under former chair Ronna McDaniel. Trump has complained that the RNC did not focus enough on “election integrity” or boosting his false claims that the election was stolen.
Trump backed a takeover by longtime North Carolina loyalist Michael Whatley and daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who have since brought in attorney Christina Bobb, who pushed numerous false election claims, as senior counsel for election integrity.
Meanwhile, McDaniel was hired and quickly unhired by NBC News after multiple hosts complained on air that the network hired someone who backed Trump’s election lies.
“Wow! Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday. “She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”
