RNC Chairman Michael Whatley joins Lara Trump for an interview on Fox News

[Music] Welcome back to my view. Well, we love getting your questions each week and sometimes we're inspired to get the answers straight from the source. Jane asked, "What is the RNC doing now to be certain the election is fair in 2028? Did you leave a road map for their success?" Jane, I have to tell you, you were not the first person to ask me this question. I think the number one concern I heard during my time as RNC co-chair was that people weren't sure they could trust our elections. That is so sad because our country relies on having free, fair, and transparent elections. Now, I do think we restored some muchneeded confidence in our elections in 2024, but we certainly can't take our foot off the gas. What we learned in 2024 that worked was being on offense, not defense. We were proactive in seeking out areas prior to the first vote ever being cast that were concerning, like for example, voter roles being cleaned or ensuring we had the same number of Republican poll workers as Democrat poll workers. And when we found an issue like that, we addressed it. We also ensured that every time a vote was cast and counted, we had eyes in the room for full transparency. And that required an enormous volunteer effort of 230,000 people all over the country. I have full confidence in Chairman Michael Watley to continue our efforts well into 2026 and 2028, but I figured I'd let him tell you for himself. It's so funny because a year ago right now, you and I had just become chair and co-chair of the RNC. It felt like we almost had an insurmountable task in front of us. Now that we're about 4 months into the president's second term in office, reflect on the past year for me. It's been amazing at every single level. Right when the president was becoming the the formal nominee, um and and we knew that we needed to completely retool the RNC. We needed to make sure that it was going to be, you know, a committee uh dedicated to to working with the president's campaign, which had not really ever been done before. Um we knew that we were we were fighting history. We were going to make the best biggest political comeback ever, but the the RNC needed to be remodeled. I'll never forget I had a conversation with him the day after the debate that he had with Joe Biden and I said, "Sir, you know, you really do have the opportunity here to have honestly the most transformational term since Ronald Reagan's first term." And the night that they announced that he was the winner, right? Election night. And he and he looked at me and he said, "You know, Michael, we got that opportunity. Let's take advantage of it." I found a photo the other day and it is at 5:30 in the morning on the tarmac at PBI. We had just come back. It was November 5th. Y an entire crazy day of campaigning. That picture encapsulates what this entire campaign was. None of us really knew what was about to happen several hours later. I've never seen a harder working campaign. I've never been around better people. So, you know, I was not surprised when we won. You know, it's very gratifying to help shape history uh for the better, and I think that America and the world are going to be better for it. We saw such a surge of young voters coming over and voting for President Trump. How do we keep them in this party and make sure that they're going to vote in 26, 28, and beyond? We're going to rebuild our economy. It's going to work for every community and every family. We're going to restore the southern border. We're going to keep our kids and our communities safe. You know, these are things that that really truly mattered to every generation. But the the the fact that he was able to turn around, take that core message and deliver it through the podcasts was really truly remarkable, you know, and and all of a sudden it was the cool campaign. And uh those votes really truly matter because now that you have 18y olds, they're going to be there when they're 24. They're going to be there when they're 28. Um you know, and and and that really does give us an opportunity to kind of build that coalition for the long term. Maybe give me your sense as as chairman of the difference right now between the Republican party and the Democrat party. The Republican Party is talking to the voters and we're talking to them about the issues that they care about. Think about family. Think about community right now. The Democratic party is in freef fall, right? They they absolutely are ruerless. They're leaderless. Joe Biden and Kla Harris, they were terrible messengers. But they had a terrible message, you know, and they are really the party right now of inflationary spending, you know, waste, fraud, and abuse, open borders, and a weak America. All they're doing is doubling down on the same failed agenda that they just ran on. These things are absolutely indefensible. And yet here they are fighting harder for that than they are their constituents. I think 2024 marked the first time for a lot of people that they felt like they could trust our electoral process. I think that was so big. It's get out the vote, protect the ballot over and over and over again before voting started. We needed to make sure that we were in the room with attorneys and volunteers and poll workers anytime a vote was cast or counted. And then we needed to communicate that, right? We needed everybody to understand that that their vote was going to be protected. on the flip side was that if you cheat or you help somebody else cheat then we are going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. It really did make a tremendous difference in terms of the outcome on election day and going forward looking at 2026 looking at 2028 are you guys going to have an operation like that here as well? Absolutely. That needs to be a bedrock foundation of the RNC going forward. The four key principles that we see are that only American citizens can vote. You have to have voter ID. States need to clean up their voter role and you want basic protections for mail and ballots. The Democrats are fighting us on all of those. The American people want them. We're going to keep this program up and running and uh it's going to be a critical part of everything we do going forward. What is it you're taking from 2024, from that election as you're looking at the midterms and maybe talk about some of the, you know, red states that might feel a little uncomfortable and the blue states that we think we have a better chance in for Republicans. I feel like we've got a very real opportunity here, right? So, the Senate map feels pretty good. We we've got, you know, tough holds in Maine and North Carolina and Kentucky. We've got great pickup opportunities in places like New Hampshire and Georgia and Michigan. the House. It's too close, right? We have a five- seat majority in the House. We need a better majority to be able to work with the president and his team on the legislative agenda going forward. Speaker John Johnson and and Senator Thun are doing fantastic jobs with the narrow margins that they have, but we need to be able to expand it. And though the RNC is looking forward, there are still some traces of the past. If we keep walking down this way, I thought maybe you'd gotten rid of all remnants of me around here, but it's not true. Nope, not at all. Because here we are up on the wall. There it is. Kept me around. Yeah, it's it's this this place um does really well when we have a lot of people. We had probably 90% of our staff that went into the camp, you know, into the um White House or or into the administration. So, we're rebuilding, but we've got a really, really good core team already put together. What we want to do is make sure that we are seamless, you know, with the president. We're here to support his agenda. We're here to support his candidates. Obviously, we want to win in the midterms. That's going to be absolutely essential for it. And while 2028 may seem an eternity away, I had to ask the question on everybody's mind. I think a lot of people turn immediately to 2028 and they say, "Well, what happens when Donald Trump isn't even involved anymore? We are the party of the working class. We are the party for every family, for every community. We're the common sense party. We're in a position now where we can have other candidates. And you think about our bench. You know, you look at all of the people that we have from the vice president to the cabinet members to governors to to members of the Senate, members of Congress. We've got amazing candidates and and potential, you know, for 2028, 2020, you know, 2032 and 2036. Donald Trump remade the Republican party in in what has the potential to really be a long-term party as long as we listen to the voters. Well, Michael Watley, thanks for taking a little time for us. Thanks for all you do and all you've done and uh we appreciate it all. Still ahead, it's nearly Mother's Day and we're sitting down with two hardworking Senate moms delivering for their families and this country. I'm realizing very quickly that counting to three doesn't work with our colleagues. They do something we like. I'm like, I'm going to count to three.