Despite the hype surrounding last week’s Democratic National Convention (DNC), the GOP has developed a “slight lead” over the Democratic Party going into election season, Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Whatley told the Washington Reporter in an extensive interview.

This year’s elections will be defined on issues of “strength versus weakness and success versus failure,” Whatley, who believes strongly that President Donald Trump will return to the White House, said.

“If you ask the voters what they care about right now, it’s jobs and the economy, it’s inflation, it’s safety and security, and on every single one of those issues Donald Trump outpolls Kamala Harris, and that’s why we’re leading in all the issue polls, and why we’re leading in the battleground states,” Whatley said.

Although the GOP “can’t be all things to all people right now,” Whatley emphasized two priorities in getting Trump reelected: “get out the vote and protect the ballot.” 

More than 165,000 volunteers from across the country have signed up to help Republicans accomplish the former, and the GOP has teamed up with state parties and leaned on state leaders, like Ohio’s Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, “to make sure that we have the right rules of the road in place before the voting starts.” Election integrity, Whatley noted, is the top priority for both him and Trump. “How important is it? You can’t put that into words.”

Another one of Whatley’s priorities was running a “world class convention.” The highlight of the RNC “wasn’t me wielding a gavel on stage,” Whatley said. “It was me talking to those [Gold Star] families backstage. It was just enormously powerful. We need to always honor and respect the military, especially their families.” The Biden-Harris administration’s surrender of Afghanistan embodies what Whatley views as the dichotomy between Trump’s strengths and Harris’s weaknesses. “When we withdrew from Afghanistan, as [Trump] has said, it was the most embarrassing day in American history. We did not do it right. We did not do it well. We put ourselves and our allies across the world in a terrible position, and it is absolutely inexcusable that the President took those actions, but Kamala Harris bragged about being the last one in the room when they made that decision.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump last week — an “important” event, “because Kennedy probably would have beaten Joe Biden in the straight-on primary, but they rigged it so that he couldn’t run, and then they pushed Joe Biden off the stage and gave it to Kamala Harris without her winning a single delegate in a single convention or primary, either in 2020 or in 2024,” Whatley said.

“What we’re seeing right now is a huge shift in black voters, Hispanic voters, and Asian-American voters who are coming towards him right now because of the policies that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have put in place over the last four years, particularly the inflationary spending that’s hurting their families and their communities right now,” Whatley added.

Whatley also sees a “huge opportunity” to expand Jewish support for the Republican Party. If “there are negative implications electorally [for supporting Israel], so be it,” he said.

The advice that Whatley had for candidates running in his home state of North Carolina applies well to Republicans up and down the ballot: “stay the course.” 

Below is a transcript of our interview with RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:
Thanks for chatting with us today, Chairman Whatley. Your career in Republican politics started back in the 1980s when you volunteered on a Senate campaign. Did you ever imagine that one day you’d be sitting here as the chair of the entire Republican Party?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
No, I gotta tell you this was not on my bingo card in January or last year, or any other time. It’s an honor, but it’s obviously an opportunity and a challenge. Typically when you come in as the chair, you get a two year term, you get an opportunity to meet everybody, to work with everybody, to kind of figure out the building and the campaigns and everything else, and then go into campaign mode. 

When Lara and I came in with just over six months before the election, obviously we’re going right into it and we’ve been very head down, working hard. It took me just one conversation with the President to realize we can’t be all things to all people right now. We really need to focus on what we’re going to do to win this thing. And it really comes down to get out the vote, protect the ballot. We are focusing all day, every day, on those two basic missions. And I think that anybody who is watching the election cycle and knows campaigns, and knows the RNC, I think they would see that the discipline that we’re putting in the field right now is kind of showing through, which is one reason I think we’re in as good a shape as we are on the campaign front. But, I’ve been a volunteer in Republican ranks. I worked in the Senate. I worked for the Bush administration, for a couple of years at the Department of Energy, but for the most part, it’s always just been, “how do I help people get elected? How do I help good Republicans get elected?” And for this opportunity to be the chair is really pretty amazing.

Washington Reporter:
A lot of our readers have been and are still GOP volunteers. What advice would you give to people like that, especially who are younger? Maybe some of them will end up being RNC chair one day.

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
Find good candidates that you believe in. And really, it’s not just good candidates. More importantly, it’s good people. Nobody gets stronger morals or a better moral compass after they get elected. I would rather work really, really hard for a guy that I think is the right guy or lady and lose than necessarily spend my time on somebody just because they think they’re going to win. When I first signed on to help Donald Trump in 2015, everybody thought I was crazy, and I had business partners and clients and family members and friends who were all like, “what in the world are you doing?” I told them “this is the guy.”

Did I have any idea nine years ago that this is where I was going to end up? Absolutely not. I just knew that we needed to make a change within the Republican Party. We needed to make a change in the country, and we needed to get back to the fundamentals of putting America first. 

And then when he put those phrases together, Make America Great Again and the American First agenda, it was really obvious to me that this is where we need to go. And I think the fact that he has remade the party the way he has is fundamentally important to the survival, not just to the party, but to the country. We do need a president who’s going to fight for us every single day, rather than try and fight for every other corner of the world. 

Washington Reporter:
What have been the biggest differences in challenges, even surprises for you, going from running the North Carolina GOP, to now running the RNC? 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
I think it’s been going really, really well. It’s one of those things where, obviously, the challenge is exponentially bigger, but the resources that we have, particularly the talent, the people we have, that team is exponentially bigger as well. When we declared that we were going to do three things, we were going to run a world class convention, we’re going to get out the vote and we’re going to protect the ballot, everybody in the Republican universe responded immediately and said, “yes, that’s what we need to be focusing on.” We’re focused on battleground states. We’re focused on making sure that we’re maximizing our efforts to flip the Senate and expand the House. But in order for Republicans to win across the board, you really have to focus on what are we doing to win? And making sure that every dollar is going towards those critical functions. And so now, we have retooled our grassroots approach in a fairly significant way to focus on leveraging our base so that they’re not just voting, but they’re going out, and they’re recruiting others to commit, and they’re knocking on doors, they’re making phone calls, and they’re really, truly doubling down as Trump Force 47 captains, where they are the ones that are reaching out through their networks and bringing in 25 more votes, or 50 more votes, or 100 more votes, that’s really critical: getting people the low propensity voters, people who will vote for us, and they haven’t voted in two years, four years or six years. How do we dynamite them off the couch and get them out there? And when we walk through the changes we want to make there, everybody says, “oh, that makes a lot of sense. I really like that approach.” 

When it comes to election integrity, we have never had a national election integrity program before. We’ve never had a campaign that is focused the way we are on protecting the ballot. And everybody following 2020 understands the importance of that. How important is it? You can’t put that into words. It is the president’s number one priority. It’s my number one priority. And so when we have walked into state parties, and we’ve talked to men’s clubs and women’s clubs, and we’ve talked to Young Republicans, and we’ve talked to College Republicans and laid out how we’re going to go about setting up a program to protect the ballot, everybody wants to help. We’ve got amazing buy in. We’ve got amazing feedback. Lara Trump and I announced that we were going to recruit and train 100,000 volunteers all across the country. At last count, 165,000 people have signed up. We’re building this program out for the first time ever. We want to make sure that no matter what happens before voting starts, we have the right rules to vote in place, we have the right laws and regulations to govern the elections, and then we need to be in the room and the voting is happening. We need to be in the room when the votes are being counted. And when we do that, that’s not necessarily sufficient, but it’s absolutely essential. So we are going to really make sure that we are following the fundamentals of election integrity and doing that all across the country. 

Washington Reporter:
Where did you watch the DNC from? 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
Well, I was working across the country. We’ve had events this week all across the country. President Donald Trump has been in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. JD Vance is traveling all around the country. I’m traveling all around the country. I watched Kamala Harris’s speech on a plane coming from Arizona to Ohio, where I am today, running an election integrity event with a number of other meetings throughout the course of the day. We’ll watch and observe. What we want to do this week, from top to bottom, is go out and talk directly to the American voters. We want to talk to families all across the country. JD Vance is out working battleground states. President Trump is out working battleground states. That’s what I’m doing. We spent a little bit of time in Washington, D.C., just doing media bracketing. But then I was in North Carolina. I was in Arizona. I’m in Ohio today. I’m going to be in Georgia tomorrow. Really making sure that we’re out there directly communicating and making sure our volunteers are focusing on mission critical areas like get out the vote, protect the ballot. And from a media perspective, we want to be talking to every single American family and every voter. We’re communicating with them about the issues that they care about. And it’s not a top down campaign the way the Democrats run it, where we tell you what’s important. For us, we listen to the voters. And if you ask the voters what they care about right now, it’s jobs and the economy, it’s inflation, it’s safety and security, and on every single one of those issues Donald Trump outpolls Kamala Harris, and that’s why we’re leading in all the issue polls, and why we’re leading in the battleground states. But those are the people we want to be talking to, particularly this week, to make sure that there is an alternative look. Because if you noticed at the convention, they did not talk about the economy and inflation. They did not talk about the southern border and the invasion that Kamala Harris, the border czar, has triggered coming across from Mexico, they do not want to talk about our standing in the world and whether or not we’re strong enough to protect our interests at home and abroad. 

Washington Reporter:
How have you been able to penetrate with that message when Kamala Harris has no policy positions on her website? What are ways that Republicans can get that message out there given a biased media?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
I just take three issues here, but you think about the three issues that really are going to define this election cycle, I think the overarching conversation is strength versus weakness and success versus failure, but when we when we look at the particular issues that Americans care about, it’s the economy and inflation is number one by far. Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on $2.5 trillion worth of inflationary spending. That is why we are seeing that grocery prices are 20 percent higher, housing prices are 20 percent higher, gasoline prices are 50 percent higher. She cast those votes. And so we want to talk about that. We talk about the southern border, which is a tremendously important issue. 10 million illegal immigrants have come across that border. Migrant crime, as the President talked, is absolutely staggering, important issue, and fentanyl is an absolute issue. But we’ve got 10 million illegal immigrants here. They don’t know who they are, where they are, or what they’re doing, because Kamala Harris was the border czar. Under her watch, they took 94 executive actions to dismantle the most secure southern border that we’ve ever had, and opened up the doors. 

When Texas tried to shut down the border themselves, she sued them. The Harris-Biden administration filed a lawsuit against Texas and said you cannot protect your own border. So this is an affirmative plan. This is not looking the other way. It’s not that she’s been a failure. She has perfectly executed their plan to let these people come across the southern border. The third thing that I would argue is on the international stage, she’s an apologist for Hamas. She’s an apologist for Palestine. She went to Vladimir Putin and said, do not invade Ukraine. Five days later, he invaded Ukraine.

We look at the issues that voters care about. She has an affirmative track record that she cannot run away from. So the question she has, is she going to double down on that, or is she going to try and cover it up and change positions on every position that she’s been holding for her entire career because there’s an election coming up and she’s trying to pander to voters. What we saw last night is she’s going to double down on every single one of these issues. From our perspective, we need to have those video clips ready, we need to be able to play that. We need to talk to people about them. But the flip side is you can’t just say she’s a terrible candidate. You have to show that Donald Trump is the only candidate right now trying to unify this country, and he’s the only candidate who is going to secure the southern border, he’s going to restore our economy, and he’s going to make sure that we are strong enough to protect our interests, both home and abroad. We have a track record there as well, and he has a record from his time in office. So you really, truly can compare and contrast her tenure in the Senate, her tenure as vice president, and his tenure in the White House. And that’s the conversation we want to have. 

Washington Reporter:
Do you think that the Trump campaign effectively counter-programmed the DNC?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
I think it is as effective as it could be. And if you just look at the traditional, mainstream, legacy media, then her coverage is going to dwarf the coverage that the President brought. But the fact that he went to the border and met with the families of the victims of migrant crime, was unbelievably powerful. I went down there because I thought it was such an important event that I really wanted to be part of it and be there with him. That’s very real. And then, of course, he was doing the Truth and the counterprogramming during her particular speech. But you look at the sum total of the events that he had over the course of this week in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, plus JD Vance moving around the country, I think we’re very effective. If all we’re doing is watching ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC News, CNN, no, we’re never going to get a fair shake. But that’s why he has a platform like X, why he has a platform like Truth, why he’s out there doing these podcasts with Elon Musk and others that are being measured in billions of views, not millions. That is a way to communicate directly with the American voters. We’ve never seen in our generation any politician who can directly communicate with American voters the way Donald Trump can. And it’s remarkable that given the built-in advantage that any Democrat has, that we’re able to be in a position coming out of the Democrat’s convention where we’re basically tied or up. If you told me six months ago or nine months ago that that’s where we’re going to be, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. We feel really good coming out of the Democratic convention with a slight lead as we’re going into this home stretch. 

Washington Reporter:
What do you think ends up happening with the Democrats, with this Uncommitted movement of anti-Israel, anti-America delegates? How do you think the GOP should be handling this ongoing chasm within the Democratic Party?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
What I’ll say is this: we are going to stand with Israel. President Trump has made it very clear that we are going to stand with Israel. That is the position of virtually every Republican, including myself. And if there are negative implications electorally, so be it. But when we look at what’s happening on the Democratic side, with their divide on it, Kamala tried very hard in her speech to play both sides of the aisle. She said that she was going to embrace Israel and protect Israel, which is really hard to believe given the support that she has had for Palestine and Hamas, but then at the same time, she said she wants a two state solution. So I think when you try and work on the issue like that, you’re very likely going to end up offending both sides and having a pretty negative impact for her.

Washington Reporter:
Do you see an opportunity for the GOP to increase its support with Jewish and pro-Israel voters? Where does that fit into the priority list in terms of coalition expansion? 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
It’s a huge opportunity for us. I went to Israel and met with a number of Americans who are over there, as well as a number of Israeli citizens who have family back here in America. And every single one of them was very clear: “we’re praying for Donald Trump. Israel will not survive if Donald Trump was not the next president,” the entire Israeli people believe it. I had a chance to meet with the families of the hostages. I had a chance to visit the attack sites from October 7, with the kibbutzim and the festival site, meet with some of the survivors down there. It is shocking, and it is powerful to see those areas and meet with those people and walk away and then see the Democrats try and have a moral equivalence on this where they’re saying that there are fine people on both sides, basically. We need to stand with our ally. And I think that by virtue of doing that, we’re going to see a major shift in Jewish voters to President Trump. 

Washington Reporter:
August 26th is the three year anniversary of the suicide attack that killed 13 American servicemembers during the Biden-Harris administration’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have never even said the names publicly of those who died. How do you think the way in which this has transpired affects the military community?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
Donald Trump has a commanding lead, really, among soldiers, military families and veterans, because he has been there for the military throughout his entire career. When you look at the reforms that he instituted at the Veterans Affairs Department with Secretary Robert Wilkie, those were very, very fundamental and critical. You look at the pay raises and the increased budgeting that he had for supplies for the military, we’ve not ever seen budget increases for the Defense Department like we saw with President Trump and the military universe knows that. The fact that we honored those Gold Star families at our convention the way that we did was really powerful. Just an amazing experience. And when I talked to those families and thanked them for sharing their story, it was something I’ll never forget. My favorite picture of me during the entire convention wasn’t me wielding a gavel on stage. It was me talking to those families backstage. It was just enormously powerful. We need to always honor and respect the military, especially their families. When we withdrew from Afghanistan, as the President has said, it was the most embarrassing day in American history. We did not do it right. We did not do it well. We put ourselves and our allies across the world in a terrible position, and it is absolutely inexcusable that the President took those actions, but Kamala Harris bragged about being the last one in the room when they made that decision. It was a colossally bad decision, and I think that there are going to be ramifications in that part of the world for decades to come, because of the shortsightedness that he had in making that decision. 

Washington Reporter:
Looking beyond Afghanistan, what do you think the significance in this election will be of the rest of the global chaos that you were talking about earlier? Are there any states where you see American weakness abroad as being a particularly salient issue?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
I do. I think any one of these battleground states, we have a tremendous military presence. We have people who are paying attention to what’s going on in the world. And I think that the threats that we face right now are not just going to live overseas. Four years ago, Iran, China and Russia were in check. Right now, Iran is openly attacking Israel, and Iran’s proxies are threatening our interests across the world. In fact, we’ve already seen an assassination attempt targeting Trump here in America that was funded by Iran. These are things that are going to come home to roost. When we talk about what we’re doing in Ukraine, we’re talking about what’s happening in the Middle East, none of these would have happened if Donald Trump was in the White House. None of these happened when he was in the White House. This is a very important issue because we want America to be strong. I really think that strength versus weaknesses is the fundamental paradigm in this election cycle, and there’s no bigger example of that than the southern border, our economy, and where we are on the world stage.

Washington Reporter:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just endorsed Donald Trump for president. What do you think the significance of that will be? And what does it say about Trump’s outreach to non-traditional groups this cycle?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
It’s really important that you look at how this happened, because Kennedy probably would have beaten Joe Biden in the straight-on primary, but they rigged it so that he couldn’t run, and then they pushed Joe Biden off the stage and gave it to Kamala Harris without her winning a single delegate in a single convention or primary, either in 2020 or in 2024. So he is obviously very excited about that, and understandably so. As you said, Donald Trump is willing to go out and talk to anybody who wants to Make America Great Again. What we’re seeing right now is a huge shift in black voters, Hispanic voters, and Asian-American voters who are coming towards him right now because of the policies that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have put in place over the last four years, particularly the inflationary spending that’s hurting their families and their communities right now. As far as Robert F. Kennedy Jr, I think, it is a very big symbol. It shows you how big a chance Donald Trump is actually building. 

Washington Reporter:
Are you concerned about libertarian candidates for president siphoning off votes from Trump? 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
Well, we certainly understand that that’s going to happen in selected states, and we’re going to see Jill Stein and Cornel West, who are going to siphon off votes on the other side of the aisle. I think at the end of the day, this election is going to come down to a worldview: do you want to see a strong America and have a strong economy, a strong southern border and a strong standing in the world? Or are you content to have an America that is not going to be as strong? That’s why I think Donald Trump is in a really good position to be able to win these battleground states and be able to win the entire election. 

Washington Reporter:
Can you talk about your legal work to prevent noncitizens from voting? 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
One of the key things that we want in our election integrity efforts is to make sure that we have the right rules of the road in place before the voting starts. So we want to make sure only American citizens are voting. We want to make sure that we have voter ID in place and enforced. We want to make sure that where we have mail-in balloting that we’ve got basic safeguards that are in place, and we want to make sure that states are cleaning up their voter rolls. So obviously, with 10 million-plus illegal immigrants coming across the southern border, we’re very concerned about the Democrats’ efforts to register them and get them to vote, even though it is illegal for them to do so. So we are working right now across the country to make sure that states are going to enforce the law that says that illegal aliens, non-citizens, cannot vote under any circumstances. That’s a huge push that we’re having in states like Nevada, states like North Carolina, states like Ohio. We are seeing state leaders like Frank LaRose in Ohio, like Ken Paxton down in Texas, in North Carolina, the North Carolina Republican Party and the GOP are working very hard to make sure that the state Board of Elections is going to enforce the law and make sure that non-citizens don’t have the ability to cast a vote. 

Washington Reporter:
What are your thoughts on the downballot candidates the GOP has going into November?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
When we look at the Senate, we’ve got an amazing cadre of candidates. Guys like Tim Sheehy, Bernie Moreno, Dave McCormick, Sam Brown, who we’re really looking at to be able to make sure that we flip the Senate. On the House side, we’re working with the House leadership, and meeting a bunch of these candidates around the country. We’re really excited about what we see in the ability to expand the map and be able to expand our majority in the House. 

Washington Reporter:
What do Republicans have to do to win North Carolina for Trump, and for the other important statewide elections this November?

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley:
The short answer is: stay the course. We won in 2016 we won in 2020 because we got up the vote and we protected the ballot. The state party right now, Jason Simmons, the chair, is a fantastic operator. Completely understands the state, completely knows how to win. He is doing a great job. He’s got a great team down there. But the biggest thing is that the Republican candidates in North Carolina listen to the voters. They understand the issues that the voters care about. They’re putting solutions on the table, and that’s why, even in a purple state like North Carolina, we are winning with Republicans up and down the ticket. 

Washington Reporter:
Awesome. Thanks so much for chatting, Chairman Whatley.