TAMPA, Florida — Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Whatley is not losing sleep over Elon Musk’s plans to launch a third party — the America Party — he told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.
When asked about Musk’s plans, Whatley told Breitbart News that “we’ll wait and see” what this is going to look like.
“If Elon wants to drag the Republican Party to the right and he’s going to be engaged in primaries, I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over that,” he said, explaining that the GOP will always have conversations on what they need to focus more or less on.
“Because we are always going to have conversations within Republican primaries about whether we need to be more focused on business and economic issues, or social issues, whether we’re going to be focused, you know, more about moving a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that, so long as everybody closes ranks once we come out of the primary,” he said.
However, Whatley said it will be much different if Musk begins an effort focusing on “beating us in the general election and electing Democrats.”
“That’s obviously a much different scenario,” the chairman explained. “So I want to kind of see how this is going to develop from him, but at the same time, we’re going to focus on the things we can control, right?”
“We’re going to be focused on recruiting and training the best candidates that we can, on making sure that we’re building the infrastructure that we need to get out the vote in our grassroots activities, and making sure that we’re building out that election integrity program,” Whatley said, identifying those as “things I can control today.”
“The investments that we’re making right now for next year are going to be very additive, but it’s important for us to be there now focusing on getting an environment, because that ultimately is going to be the biggest thing. What is the economy going to look like? What is, you know, our border going to look like? What is our national security posture going to look like?” he asked.
“That’s what the President, the administration and Congress are going to focus on,” Whatley added, making it clear that the RNC intends to talk about these things with a consistent drive toward midterm success.
“So we want to make sure that we’re talking about, that we’re amplifying that, and we’re getting ready — from a nuts and bolts perspective — for the election,” he added.
WATCH the full interview below:
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