ATLANTA— Amy Kremer was an early tea party leader who supported Donald Trump for president in 2016. She ran for Congress from Georgia in 2017 and got less than 1% of the Republican primary vote.
In 2021, she organized the rally near the White House that took place hours before hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to protest his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
As voters returned Trump to power in 2024, Kremer unseated a conservative stalwart to become a Republican National Committee member. This week in Atlanta, she used that post to help elect a new party chairman, Joe Gruters of Florida. He’s another original Trump backer who has been described by the president as a “MAGA warrior”— a reference to the “Make America Great Again” movement.
“I never thought I’d be sitting here for something like this,” Kremer said. “It’s Donald Trump’s party now.”
Sitting presidents typically choose their national party leaders. But today’s RNC, with grassroots activists such as Kremer and a leader in Gruters, demonstrates how much the Republicans have changed from the establishment-controlled Grand Old Party and now reflect Trump and his populist nationalism.
Almost a dozen interviews with RNC members found an affinity for the president that they described as running deeper than for his predecessors. They insist Trump’s remaking of the economy, the federal government and America’s role in the world are overdue, and they are confident his political struggles will not doom the party in the 2026 midterm election.
They described a seamless relationship between the White House and the party machinery, and as better than during Trump’s first term. Perhaps most notably, they argued that Republicans’ “America First” and MAGA identity are not simply about Trump’s charismatic branding but rather evidence of a movement that predated his presidency and will last beyond.
“When you see the working-class people that bought into this, it was for real. It wasn’t a fly-by-night,” said the Nevada Republican chairman, Michael McDonald. “Donald Trump brought something that needed to wake up the party, and he did. And it’s never going back.”
Trump didn’t begin as a Republican Party man
Kremer took her RNC seat when the party convened at the 2024 convention in Milwaukee. She was one of nearly four dozen new members out of the 168 seats. Another 21 new members joined the committee in Atlanta.
“That’s all MAGA,” she said.
Nevada’s McDonald was elected in 2011 and is now the longest-serving Republican state party chair. He laughed when asked about party dynamics during Trump’s first campaign and presidency.
“We had people inside the Republican Party throwing marbles at our feet,” said McDonald, who was indicted as a fake elector after the 2020 election, accused of scheming to keep Trump in the White House even after he lost Nevada to Biden. A Nevada judge dismissed the case last year.
Trump’s second-term secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was a Florida senator and one of Trump’s primary rivals in 2016. In that campaign, Rubio had called the would-be president a “con artist.” At the GOP convention that year, another candidate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, flouted protocol by not explicitly endorsing Trump.
