Trump Rejects Now-Withdrawn Draft Resolution to Have RNC Declare Him ‘Presumptive 2024 Nominee’

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, former president Donald Trump urged Republican National Committee members not to proceed with a draft resolution spearheaded by Maryland’s RNC committeeman David Bossie to declare him the “presumptive 2024 nominee.” Bossie withdrew the resolution, which had been expected to go to a vote at next week’s annual RNC winter meeting, on Thursday evening.

Bossie did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a person familiar with the matter confirmed the resolution has been pulled. The Dispatch first reported the existence of the draft resolution.

Earlier Thursday, NR reported that many RNC members had interpreted this draft resolution as an attempt by Bossie, a close Trump ally, and other resolution cosponsors to put intense pressure on RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to rally behind Trump and explicitly call for his lone rival, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, to drop out of the presidential race. During a Fox News interview on Tuesday, McDaniel said that she does not see “the math and the path going forward” for Haley, who is staying in the race after losing to Trump in Iowa and the New Hampshire, and that the party should “unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump.”

“Who cares what the RNC says? We’ll let millions of Republican voters across the country decide who should be our party’s nominee, not a bunch of Washington insiders,” a Haley spokeswoman told NR. “If Ronna McDaniel wants to be helpful she can organize a debate in South Carolina, unless she’s also worried that Trump can’t handle being on the stage for 90 minutes with Nikki Haley.”

“Resolutions, such as this one, are brought forward by members of the RNC,” RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper said in a statement earlier in the day. “Chairwoman McDaniel doesn’t offer resolutions. This will be taken up by the Resolutions Committee and they will decide whether to send this resolution to be voted on by the 168 RNC members at our annual meeting next week.”

Some RNC members privately speculated earlier Thursday that the move was an effort to circumvent Rule 11, a national party rule that bars the RNC from contributing “money or in-kind aid to any candidate for any public or party office of that state,” unless the candidate in question is unopposed, without unanimous support from every RNC member.

As David Drucker reports in the Dispatch:

Under current RNC rules, Trump still has to win the requisite number of nominating convention delegates—1,215—to become the party’s unchallenged presumptive nominee. After the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Trump leads Haley in the race for delegates 32 to 17.

But passage of this resolution, possibly next week at the RNC winter meeting in Las Vegas, could begin a preemptive process of the national party working with the former president as if he had already done so. And under RNC rules, that is permissible. This resolution, even in draft form, also functions as another sign that the GOP establishment is anxious to coalesce behind Trump and put an end to a presidential primary that, after his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former president looks poised to win.

The move came as a surprise to some RNC committee members, many of whom told National Review that they planned to vote against the draft resolution should it formally come up for consideration at the GOP’s Las Vegas meeting.

“It’s an awful idea and precedent,” Mississippi’s RNC committeeman Henry Barbour told NR. “Voters should decide and not RNC insiders.”

“I believe that the RNC is obligated to be neutral arbiters and honest brokers when it comes to running a primary and convention,” said Tennessee’s RNC committeeman Oscar Brock. “We can’t take sides with candidates, when only 3 percent of the Republican primary voters have voted.”

The expected consideration of this draft resolution came after a number of state parties — including in Michigan, Georgia, and Florida — have already called for the party to unite behind Trump as the presumptive nominee.

Before the resolution was pulled, Florida RNC member Peter Feaman told NR Thursday afternoon he planned to support the effort referencing his own state legislators’ endorsements of Trump, including senator Marco Rubio and governor Ron DeSantis — who dropped out of the race last week to endorse the former president. The Florida GOP plans to formally endorse him at its upcoming annual meeting next month. “I’m following the lead of our highest elected officials in the state,” Feaman told NR.

This story has been updated to include comments from Trump and the RNC.