The MAGA Mafia's RNC Bust-Out

The RNC Bust-Out is on.

The “bust-out” is a trope in mob movies, novels, and television series you’ve seen before. A hapless business owner gets in bed with the mob due to borrowing money from a loan shark or owing gambling debts to men with vowelly names and certain ethnolinguistic fillips. They use the patsy’s credit, assets, and properties to roll up massive new debts to more traditional lenders and vendors, then burn the place down for the insurance money. Only the stooge gets screwed in the end.

In Goodfellas, Henry Hill describes what happens when normies get in bed with the mob, either through choice or fate:

“Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with a bill, he can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.”

The Bust Out. Photo: Goodfellas, Warner Brothers

Which brings us to the RNC.

While it was already under Donald Trump’s effective control, given Ronna Romney McDaniel’s sycophantic stewardship, the whole game has changed. Ronna Romney McDaniel will be a cautionary tale that the mob may use people who bend the knee and offer to cooperate with them, but she’ll never be a made guy. Utterly desperate to play in the Big Show, Romney-McDaniel changed her name so it would never to remind Donald Trump of his betters.

The North Carolina anon at the party's titular head is a nonentity. Lara Trump is there as the eyes and ears of the Family. Chris LaCivita is there to bleed every last drop of revenue and resources to a) the Trump effort and b) his friends and allies. Everyone who gets the jobs and contracts canceled en masse this week will be a LaCivita ally or crony. Lara isn’t sophisticated enough to understand what happens when all this rolls forward, but it won’t matter much.

Together, they will bleed the RNC to a desiccated husk. They will break it, kill off any institutional knowledge or expertise in their desire to root out what human-flounder hybrid Charlie Kirk called “RINO sleeper cells.” They will merge the operations into Trumpworld, and everything in Trump World exists to serve only Trump.

The presumption that in 2024, nine years into Trump’s reign as the GOP’s dominant force, the RNC is stacked to the gills with secret RINO Fifth Column types is beyond ludicrous. Everyone in that building has survived the last few years by being as much of a Trump loyalist as can be imagined, but it does point to the Paranoid Style of MAGA politics. The Purity Posse is riding to the RNC, boys! Mount up!

Party-building is hard work, and once a party’s operational core collapses, it’s hard to revive it. (Democrats in Florida and Republicans in California, for example.) This wholesale slaughter in the RNC is one more sign that the MAGA GOP isn’t simply post-partisan; it’s post-organizational, post-rational, and just another opportunity to monetize Trumpism.

This case of institutional ETTD means the end of the line for the old GOP. The state committeemen and committeewomen, the state organizations themselves, the major donors, the people who work their way up to get convention seats and tickets are all in for a crashing disappointment. The RNC’s work in voter registration, research, digital, communications, and turnout will wither and die before summer. All that will remain is the RNC’s ability to sluice money (minus a little handling fee and the vig) into Trump’s gaping maw.

All that will matter is moving the money.

“Now the RNC’s got Donald as a partner. Any problems, they’re on their own. Trying to run a national political party? Fuck you, pay me. Trying to help state Republican Parties to win races down the ballot? Fuck you, pay me. Need money for something other than Trump’s legal bills? Fuck you, pay me. RNC email lists getting burnt out and producing less revenue? Fuck you, pay me. Major donor program suffering because all the cash is going into the Trump Famiglia? Fuck you, pay me.”

What’s the difference between organized crime and the Trump enterprise in the RNC bust-out?

So far, they haven’t burned down 310 First Street for the insurance money. It is, however, only March.

Fuck you, pay me.