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[0] The Republican National Committee is under new leadership, and it's hit the ground running in aggressively implementing its strategy to get Donald Trump and other Republicans elected in November.
[1] One of the key focuses of the RNC is election integrity, and it's taking multiple states to court over the issue.
[2] In this episode, we sit down with the RNC's new chair, Michael Watley, to discuss changes he's making legal action his team is taking and why he thinks they're poised to win big in November.
[3] I'm Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's March 24th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Joining us now to discuss the strategy of the RNC under his leadership is its new chairman, Michael Watley.
[6] Chairman, thanks so much for joining us.
[7] Yeah, no, happy to be with you.
[8] So first, congratulations on taking over leadership of the RNC.
[9] What directional changes can we expect?
[10] Well, I think that most of the changes are going to reflect the fact that we now have Donald Trump as our nominee.
[11] And so anytime, you know, the RNC picks up a nominee like we have right now, those are the changes.
[12] We just want to make sure that we're working hand and glove with the president's campaign.
[13] And every single effort that we have is going to be focused on making sure that we win up and down the ballot.
[14] You know, you think about the presidential race, obviously number one issue for us, but we've got to flip the Senate and we need to expand our majority in the House.
[15] So as an organization, we are built to win elections.
[16] and that's what we're going to be focused on.
[17] One of the major focuses that we've heard from Trump's team and also a lot of the GOP leadership is election integrity.
[18] You've made clear that that's going to be an important aspect of the R &C under your leadership.
[19] What actions are you taking on that front?
[20] Well, there's really two places that we want to go when we talk about election integrity.
[21] The first is in every state, we want to have the laws, the rules, the regulations in place that are going to allow for a fair, transparent election, right?
[22] So we want to work with state legislators.
[23] We want to work with regulators such as secretaries of state or boards of election.
[24] And if those won't work, then of course we're going to have to go to court and we're already in 80 lawsuits in 24 states around the country to make sure that the rules of the road are where they need to be.
[25] Secondly, we need to recruit and train thousands of attorneys and volunteers who can serve as poll workers as poll observers.
[26] We want to be in the room when people are voting.
[27] We want it to be in the room when the votes are being counted.
[28] Let's discuss some of those lawsuits, particularly the two you filed against the secretaries of state of Michigan and Nevada.
[29] What are the details of those cases?
[30] Well, the simple way to put it is that they have in many of the counties in each of those states more people on the voter role than are eligible to vote, which obviously is a problem.
[31] So what we need to do is have those states actually comply with the National Voting Rights Act, NVRA, which requires the states to clean up the voting rolls.
[32] When people die or people move away, they need to be taken off the rolls.
[33] Particularly when you think about Nevada, where we have universal mail voting, that they send live ballots out to everybody on the roll.
[34] Well, if people are on the role that aren't supposed to be there, that's obviously a problem.
[35] Right.
[36] Now, according to the Washington Times, the Nevada lawsuit is the 81st case of election integrity litigation that the RNC has put forth this cycle.
[37] What can you tell us about some of those other cases?
[38] Well, look, I think that we think about, you know, kind of buckets, right?
[39] 88 % of Americans support voter ID.
[40] Well, we want to make sure that we have voter ID that's being implemented in states all across the country.
[41] We're currently involved in 20 cases there.
[42] Polling absolutely shows consistently that we need to have non -citizens not voting, right?
[43] 88 %, 89 % of Americans oppose non -citizen voting.
[44] So we're involved in a dozen cases across the country to make sure that we don't have non -citizens that are voting.
[45] We also need basic protections on mail and voting, things like signature requirements, things like witness requirements, requiring the mail and ballots to be in by election day.
[46] So we're involved in dozens of lawsuits, you know, to make sure that we have just basic rules of the road are going to be put in place and followed.
[47] What about ballot harvesting?
[48] There's been a lot of controversy about that.
[49] And one of the things we're hearing is, look, the Republican Party needs to embrace it in certain states where it's legal.
[50] How are you guys approaching ballot harvesting?
[51] Well, ballot harvesting in some way, shape, or form is legal in about 14 states around the country.
[52] And where it's legal, we need to embrace it.
[53] We need to be doing it.
[54] I think that as a concept, we want people to handle their own ballots.
[55] We want people to do.
[56] their own mailing.
[57] But where it is legal, we need to engage in it, right?
[58] I mean, where early voting is legal, we want people to early vote.
[59] Where mail -in voting is legal, we want people to vote by mail.
[60] Any tool that is available out there for us to be able to drive a voter to the poll and make sure that they actually cast a ballot, we want to take advantage of.
[61] You've recently beefed up your legal team with attorneys Charlie Speese and Christina Bob.
[62] How do you plan to use them?
[63] yeah look well what i will say is that the rnc our legal operation is is tremendous i mean as you would expect when you're running a billion dollar you know operation we've got a lot of things that are going on and we've got a great in -house legal counsel team which i'm very very proud of you know what we have done over the last couple years is we've built out a very distinct separate election integrity operation so we now have a full tilt program within the rnc so we've got a senior advisor Josh Helton, who is overseeing that as well as other folks that we have lawyers and staffers, right?
[64] So in every one of our battleground states, we want to have an election integrity director.
[65] We want to have election integrity council.
[66] So we've got a number of different attorneys that are going to be working with us.
[67] The councils are going to be working, as I mentioned earlier, to focus on making sure that the rules, the laws, the regulations that we have in place are what we need them to be.
[68] And then we're going to work with our election integrity.
[69] directors to recruit and train all of those volunteers that we're going to need to work, you know, shifts on election day.
[70] Let's shift to how you'll win in November.
[71] Republicans did not perform as well as they wanted to in the midterms and special elections.
[72] How are you planning to remedy that?
[73] Two things.
[74] First off, as we've already been talking about, protecting the ballot, that's going to be an absolutely critical function for us.
[75] And secondly, we're going to get out the vote, right?
[76] And so, you know, what we need to do is take every voter that we can get our hands on, make sure that they are educated voters, and then make sure that they get to the polls, right?
[77] So we're building out our early vote program, and we're working on making sure we call it our bank the vote program.
[78] What we want to do is make sure that we are talking to voters before they go vote, right?
[79] Fifty percent plus of all voters in the country are going to vote before for election day this cycle.
[80] And so we want to make sure that those are informed voters.
[81] So we have scaled all of our efforts to reach voters earlier in the election cycle and we'll be talking to them earlier.
[82] Then secondly, we also want to make sure that we are growing that vote.
[83] So there are millions of low propensity voters.
[84] And by low propensity voters, what I mean are people that will vote for Republicans if they go vote.
[85] But they've only voted in one, two, maybe never over the last three, four, five election cycles.
[86] If we can get them to vote, they're going to be reliable Republican voters.
[87] So for them, it's just basically a turnout that vote operation.
[88] So we're going to be spending a significant amount of time, not just in the battleground states, but obviously a big focus on the battleground states and all across the country, because when we have good persuasion going into undecided voters, unaffiliated voters, independent voters, that's going to help us a lot.
[89] And when we turn out the voters that we know will be ours and get them to the polls, that's really going to help us up and down the ballot all across the country.
[90] You mentioned battleground states, and obviously those are in the end, the key to winning the election.
[91] Are you doing anything in particular in the battleground states differently than some of the other states?
[92] I think it's just going to be a matter of focus.
[93] I think it's going to be a matter of understanding who are those voters that we need to turn out, and then who are those voters that we need to persuade, and we're going to be, you know, sparing no expense, really, when it comes to putting the resources on the ground in those battlegrounds.
[94] You've locked in a nominee earlier than ever before this time with Trump.
[95] How does having more time before the general election affect the race?
[96] I think it helps us tremendously, you know, and we're very excited that President Trump has clinched the nomination.
[97] He is the official presumed nominee earlier than we've ever had happened before, which gives us a lot more runway.
[98] It helps us in terms of our fundraising.
[99] It certainly helps us in terms of being able to have the merger that we're seeing right now.
[100] We're reorganizing the RNC to merge with his campaign and make sure that we have one unified effort for all of our operations.
[101] And it also allows the party to come together at an earlier time.
[102] I mean, we're seeing unity right now across the country where it needs to be and it's only going to get better.
[103] But this party is going to be fully unified behind all of our Republican candidates up and down the ballot, but particularly behind Donald Trump to make sure that we're going into November.
[104] And we're very focused on fighting Democrats, not other Republicans.
[105] Now, Trump's been under what Republicans have called lawfare from officials in multiple states and obviously the federal government.
[106] His legal bills are a huge drain on the campaign financially.
[107] How much of that tab is the R &C picking up?
[108] We're not going to pick it up.
[109] I think that the campaign has made it very clear.
[110] They are not going to ask us to help cover the legal fees, and we're not planning that.
[111] Every dollar that we raise is going to be spent putting lead on target.
[112] Every dollar that we raise is going to be focused on winning.
[113] It's going to be focused on getting out the vote and protecting the ballot.
[114] Final question.
[115] In your view, what is the key for Republicans to win in November?
[116] We are going to have the resources that we need to be able to get our message out across the country and we're going to talk to every voter.
[117] And the key is that Republicans are going to win because we are hearing the issues that the American voters care about.
[118] Issues like jobs in the economy, like education, like safety, like national security.
[119] These are issues that Republicans win every single poll, every single time.
[120] And when we talk to the voters, we're going to put solutions on the table, and they're going to know we have those solutions, and that's why we're going to win in November.
[121] Well, Chairman, thank you so much for joining us.
[122] Not a problem.
[123] We appreciate you guys.
[124] Look forward to doing it again.
[125] That was the RNC's new chair, Michael Watley, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.