Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Tara Palmeri.

It’s been another unsurprising week in Republican politics as Donald Trump steamrolled his way toward the nomination. Perhaps the only surprise around town lately pertains to the “he” that Trump is referring to when he talks about his future running mate. (Although, yes, let us not waste our breath. Lots can change…) I expect this beauty contest will be rolling for months.

Another reason that this speculation seems ridiculous: A veep is an expensive investment. This person requires a large staff, a 737, and Trump has more immediate issues to square away—like cleaning house at the R.N.C. and sidelining his old buddy, Ronna Romney McDaniel, who said she will support Trump even if he is convicted. My fresh reporting on this fascinating dynamic unspools below the fold.

Meanwhile, political animals should check out my latest episode of Somebody’s Gotta Win, where my Puck partner Teddy Schleifer dropped in from the Trump not-quite-victory party. Also, please buy Tina Nguyen’s book The MAGA Diaries; it will be your guide to the new levels of crazy as we get through this election year.

But first, the latest from my partner Abby Livingston on the Hill…

• K Street’s most-wanted list: The recruitment of former members is a strange, ethically dubious dance. It probably won’t be clear for several months who’s headed where, and practically everyone I talk to on the Hill says more retirements are coming. It’s also not yet clear who the M.V.P.s are; that will be determined in November, when we’ll learn who will control the House next year.

  The typical House Republican retiree this cycle is an exhausted, pre-Trump member who hit his or her committee ceiling. If the G.O.P. holds the House, then Republicans who previously served on the top committees—Approps, Financial Services, Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means—will be in high demand. Within E&C alone, there are currently five senior-ish Republicans retiring (Michael Burgess, Larry Bucshon, Debbie Lesko, Greg Pence, and Kelly Armstrong) along with two Democratic bold-faced names: Anna Eshoo and John Sarbanes. And that’s just so far. Job prospects will deteriorate for whichever party is in the minority next year, especially since there will be a glut of their peers coming off the campaign battlefield.

  The most obvious exception to these rules is House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry, who is probably the most in-demand would-be lobbyist on the market right now due, of course, to his tenure on that committee, but also his background in House whipping.

• Getting an edge: One sneaky way for a member to stand out in a crowded lobbying job market is to simply resign before their term ends to get ahead of the pack. It’s a frowned-upon practice, and the argument has been made to me in the past that it’s such an ugly look that it’s counterproductive to the mission, which is charming former colleagues. However, congressional power currently depends on a margin that, some days, is a single vote. In order to stay on good terms with one’s caucus, it’s hard (but not impossible) to imagine anyone would abruptly vacate their seat right now.

  Finally, it’s worth remembering that this is mostly a House sociology story. There’ve been eight exits from the Senate, but considering that Dianne Feinstein died, Ben Sasse already landed his post-Senate job (at the University of Florida), and Mike Braun and Mitt Romney were wealthy before they came to the upper chamber, pickings will be slim for K Street recruiters. Romney, in particular, has better things to do.

According to a source with knowledge of the books, the R.N.C. is expected to report that it still only has about $9 million in cash on hand, around the same sum that was reported in the last two filings—and probably not quite what presumptive nominee Donald Trump was hoping for as a general interest campaign fund. In 2016, of course, the R.N.C. had about $18 million in cash on hand after chairman Reince Priebus cleaned up the books and took out a line of credit. But due to lackluster enthusiasm from small and large donors alike, plus an expensive election integrity operation, the money is not coming in as quickly as it’s bleeding out. “We’re not in as strong of a position as we’d like to be. Certainly, fundraising is way below what we’ve hoped,” said national committee member Oscar Brock of Tennessee, who voted for Daniels challenger Harmeet Dhillon last year. “We’ve managed to get by fairly successfully, but it would be better if we had more cushion.”

There is precedent for a nominee selecting a deputy chair or political director type, who effectively layers over the chair, if there’s friction between the campaign and the committee. In 2008, John McCain sent over his top political aide, Frank Donatelli, to be deputy chairman of the R.N.C., along with a handful of other aides. The Romney campaign also sent over political operatives, including Ward Baker, although they didn’t have issues with Priebus and didn’t attempt to overshadow the chair. The Trump campaign was more deferential in 2016, too, given the lifeline the R.N.C. offered them in the form of much-needed staff, money, and other resources. Priebus and then-R.N.C. chief of staff Katie Walsh were welcome embeds in Trump Tower. In 2020, when Trump was an incumbent, Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner were the architects of their $1 billion “Death Star.”

But this 2024 operation is different. The Trump campaign has out-leveraged the Republican National Committee because they’ve become more sophisticated, and they have the staff, money, and knowledge. The Trump campaign has been griping for months about establishing a joint fundraising committee with the R.N.C. so they can start collecting checks for as much at $800,000, as my colleague Teddy Schleifer reported. (The hold-up is that it requires sign-off from the state parties, and then the money raised has to be held in an escrow account until there is an official presumptive nominee. In the meantime, the Trump campaign is considering setting up individual joint fundraising apparatuses with state parties.) This is all coming to a head as fundraising is down across the board for both parties and the R.N.C. has been investing millions in election integrity initiatives, engaging in a whopping 76 election integrity lawsuits and their early-voting drive, “Bank the Vote.”

Ronna, for her part, appears to already feel the pressure and has redoubled her public displays of Trump genuflection. On Wednesday, she broke party rules by appearing to call on Nikki Haley to drop out of the race—a day after she lost New Hampshire by about 11 points. Earlier today, The Dispatch’s David Drucker reported that the R.N.C. is reviewing a draft resolution to declare Trump the party’s presumptive nominee even as Haley is still campaigning. A next step, of course, would be to formalize the arrangement by installing a Trump ally atop the R.N.C.

The trending Trump candidate of choice is, naturally, co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. He is Trump’s political and messaging guru and has been vocal about the need for an R.N.C. cleanup. David Bossie, another former Trump campaign acolyte (and an R.N.C. committee member representing Maryland), could also be elevated to a deputy chair, although some in Trump world remain annoyed that Bossie, as chairman of the R.N.C. debate committee, sanctioned any debates at all.

But the new, more disciplined Trump inner circle has been open about their dissatisfaction with McDaniel: Her flaccid fundraising, the lack of messaging on abortion, the succession of electoral losses (even if Trump, himself, picked the loser candidates), her decision to hold presidential primary debates, and her seemingly slow pace forming a joint fundraising committee for a candidate who has still, at least technically, not secured the nomination. Trump, himself, expressed his frustration with his customary authorial charm. “RNC must save money on lowest ever ratings debates,” he noted on Truth Social in November. “Use it against the Democrats to STOP THE STEAL! If not, REVAMP THE RNC, NOW!!!”

McDaniel, for her part, seems pliant—even with the support of some two-thirds of the R.N.C. committee members. She does not plan to run for reelection when her term ends in January. And, according to a source familiar with the situation, McDaniel has suggested that she would fast-track a request from Trump to install one of his people in a senior role even before he becomes the nominee. This source said that she would even be willing to step down if Trump requested it, although it would presumably be choreographed more elegantly as a step-aside sort of thing.

McDaniel, after all, isn’t completely in the Mar-a-Lago penalty box. She remains close to Susie Wiles, Trump’s top campaign adviser, whom she helped rehabilitate after DeSantis defenestrated her following his gubernatorial reelection—but that just might mean an even tougher conversation. “If Trump came to us and said, ‘We want Chris LaCivita to be deputy chairman,’ the committee would do it,” said a knowledgeable source.

Steve Bannon also likes to play Fantasy R.N.C. Chairperson on his podcast, War Room. Just yesterday he floated Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren, who has been a frequent critic of McDaniel and ran Dhillon’s campaign to challenge her. “A lot of the donors have lost confidence in her, big and small,” Wren said. “A huge portion of the R.N.C.’s fundraising is small-dollar donations. The grassroots are apoplectic. They’ve been frustrated with Ronna since 2020. They wanted a ground game and legal fund that they didn’t get, so they stopped giving.”

In truth, the R.N.C. does have its own problems, many of which seem at least Trump-adjacent. Many large donors are reluctant to give because they either don’t want to pay Trump’s legal bills or support him as nominee. (The R.N.C. stopped paying his legal bills in 2022 when he announced his candidacy.) At the same time, the R.N.C. has struggled to build a small-donor apparatus separate from Trump. It doesn’t help that these small donors have been further dissuaded by MAGA warriors like Vivek Ramaswamy, who have identified McDaniel with the establishment.

Donors may also recall that Trump sent a cease-and-desist to the R.N.C. after he lost the 2020 election to force them to stop using his name in solicitation emails. Just days before the R.N.C. meeting in Las Vegas next week, Turning Point USA is holding its own “R.N.C. Summit” counterprogramming for county leaders. “You’re everybody’s enemy. The MAGA people hate you because you’re not MAGA enough, and the old-school people think you’re too MAGA,” said Brock, the pro-Dhillon committee member. “Part of the problem is that she’s been in the job for too long. It’s easy to blame her.”