Report: Tensions Crackle Between Trump Campaign And RNC

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Donald Trump’s fiery anti-immigration speech and unorthodox management structure have exacerbated tensions between his team and officials at the Republican National Committee, causing each side to point fingers, according to a Friday New York Times report.

RNC officials including chairman Reince Priebus had reportedly hoped the GOP nominee would take a more measured tone in his much-hyped Wednesday speech on immigration in Arizona. Officials were conspicuously silent on social media after Trump instead threw red meat to his base, calling for mass deportation and even making a crack about deporting Hillary Clinton.

Yet according to the Times, Trump’s team blamed the RNC for failing to control the backlash to the inflammatory speech, which prompted the resignation of several members of Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council.

“The RNC needs to take control of this situation and quickly,” Trump’s senior policy advisor Stephen Miller wrote in an email to campaign staff, the Times reported.

Miller reportedly dismissed the Republicans who left the council as “professional amnesty lobbyists,” and asked, “Can Reince do his job?”

Priebus told the Times that the RNC had a “fantastic working relationship” with the Trump campaign and called any reports of friction “gossip.”

Yet Republican sources who work with both sides told the Times that these tensions extend to the campaign’s funding.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly challenged RNC chief of staff Katie Walsh at a meeting in late August, accusing the committee of devoting insufficient funds to the Trump campaign. Attendees at the meeting told the Times that the RNC was responsible for providing fundraising assistance to all GOP candidates and couldn’t devote all of its resources to Trump.

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