‘What Are You Doing?’ Ex-Florida GOP Chair Blasts RNC Members for ‘Silence and Inaction’ Over Trump Takeover of Party

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

Al Cárdenas, the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and RNC board member, pulled no punches in his reaction to the takeover of the party by former President Donald Trump, blasting the current RNC members for their “silence and inaction.”

Now that the ex-president has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, his allies are making sure that the party is controlled by loyalists.

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was elected as RNC co-chair (despite a brutally mocked lack of qualifications), along with Michael Whatley, another MAGA devotee. A few days later, there was a “bloodbath” at the RNC as dozens of employees — including several high level senior staffers — were fired. Christina Bobb, a former OAN reporter who frequently posts conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was engaged in the effort to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, has been hired by the RNC as “senior counsel for election integrity.”

Meanwhile, Trump continues to battle four separate criminal indictments and a pile of civil lawsuits.

In January, a New York jury issued a $83.3 million verdict against Trump for defaming E. Jean Carroll, which followed a May 2023 trial where another jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, and awarded $5 million in damages. Earlier this month, Trump posted a $91.6 million bond as he appeals the Carroll verdicts, an amount that is higher than the amount of the verdicts because of the New York District Court’s requirement for parties to post bonds of 110%.

In February, Judge Arthur Engoron issued a ruling in the New York civil fraud case ordering Trump to pay a nearly $355 million penalty and barring him from running his company for three years. With interest, that figure is over $450 million and the former president will soon have to put up a bond to cover that amount as well and secure his assets during the appeal.

And then there are the undoubtedly substantial legal fees Trump must pay the teams of lawyers representing him in these various criminal and civil matters. On the campaign side, Trump is badly trailing Biden’s fundraising to the point where he may have financial difficulties putting on the boisterous rallies he enjoys so much.

All these issues were clearly on Cárdenas’ mind when he blasted the RNC members for their surrender to this de facto merger with not just the Trump campaign (as the party would be expected to do to a large extent after a presidential nominee was decided) but also the ex-president’s personal legal entanglements.

Cárdenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union (the organization that puts on CPAC), shared his frustrations in a post on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, lamenting how the RNC had fired so many people, moved its headquarters to Palm Beach (the location of Trump’s Florida home at Mar-a-Lago), and was now run by Trump’s daughter-in-law.

“[I]n essence it has become an asset less shell while MAGA runs GOP from Trump’s PACS so he can use those funds as he pleases,” Cárdenas wrote. “If you are a member of the RNC (as i was) what are you doing? You have a responsibility to the organization you were sworn in to be a member of – your silence and inaction is scandalous and you are equally to blame.”

This is far from the first criticism of Trump by Cárdenas, who is was born in Cuba and is married to CNN contributor and The View co-host Ana Navarro, herself a vocal Trump critic and Nicaraguan immigrant. Other posts from Cárdenas bashing Trump go after the ex-president for accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country” by pointing out “4 of Trump’s 5 children were born to immigrant mothers,” call his comments about Hezbollah “abhorrent” and “just unbearable,” and condemn Viktor Orbán as “Putin’s messenger” in advance of the Hungarian Prime Minister meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Reached for comment, Cárdenas told Mediaite he was concerned about the detrimental effects on local and state GOP organizations.

“The grassroots structure of the national and state GOP organizations was created so the power structure of the party would work from the ground up,” he said, but “[n]ow the power structure in essence has been wiped out. It’s at the top basically run by [Trump] and a handful of his cohorts without checks and balances. Many local chapters rely on RNC national help. My sense is that many will either fold or become irrelevant. Same for the less populated state parties.”

This article has been updated to add the quote from Cárdenas.