On Saturday, Arizona RNC Committeeman Bruce Ash called for the execution of Trump campaign leaders for their failure to block Enid Mickelsen’s appointment as the Rules Chair for the GOP convention. Ash, who has called for violence in the past, was not the first however to question Trump’s team.
From failing to allow Arizona-based staff to participate in Trump’s visit to the state on Saturday, to losing delegates to the up-coming convention, the Arizona campaign is in disarray. Under the titular leadership of Arizona’s colorful Treasurer Jeff DeWit, and the services of hacks like Daniel Stefanski, the Trump campaign struggled to fill even half of the arena on Saturday.
Ash’s bitter statement about Trump’s campaign was reportedly fueled in part by the sore feelings of Trump campaign team members, who were disenfranchised on Saturday. But those sour grapes could not have been the primary source for Ash’s call for executions.
Before making the call for violence, Ash held himself up as a defender of the grassroots against the establishment Prebius:
“I was the elected chairman two straight terms as the RNC standing Committee on Rules chairman. By rule – the chairman of the RNC selects the convention Rules Committee chair. That is the rules, and I did not expect to be named as the convention rules chairman partly because of the standoff that Reince Prebius and I and a few other members had at our spring meeting this year.
However the naming of Enid Mickelson and Ron Kaufman was truly breathtaking. Because what that means is you have two Romney loyalists, a Bush loyalist as well with Kaufman. Kaufman was part of the Ben Ginsberg uprising that happened at the 2012 Rules Committee Convention that lead to so many bad, bad things happening at that meeting. Prebius has also appointed Haley Barbour as the chairman of the Permanent Organization Committee. Now, normally what happens is when these committee chairman are selected they have a presumptive nominee, which we have a presumptive nominee; his name happens to be Donald Trump. Donald Trump has assigned certain leadership in his campaign, in this case Ed Brookhover to be a liaison at the RNC. It would appear as though Mr. Brookeover, Mr. Manafort, and Mr. Lewandowski were asleep at the switch or they didn’t know enough about how the building works – they allowed to chairman of the RNC to throw in his people on these two extraordinarily important committees. And actually he bumped Mike Duncan, former chair of the RNC, because Duncan wouldn’t allow any kind of things to go on in that committee that would have allowed Mr. Trump to be denied the nomination.
I believe what we are seeing is an inside job. There is already beginning to appear to be discredit for the presumptive nominee in the RNC and with Senate and House leadership. I don’t know where it is it’s going to lead. They still need to get the majority – two thirds of the majority of the members of the convention to suspend the rules with respect to unbundling the delegates on the first ballot. But = these appointees are likely to be able to hold sway – considerable sway – over those committees and I am going to be at my desk at the Convention Rules Committee and we will have a suite of rules changes and we will be fighting any rules change that takes the delegates votes away from where they were originally intended.”
Ash admitted that “Donald Trump was not my first, second, or third choice,” but according to sources, Ash is pretending to be a Trump defender so as to eventually win favor with Trump and install Ash’s man as the next RNC Chair.
It was after his insincere claims about defending Trump, that Ash called for Trump’s team to be killed. “This is not just on Prebius, this is on Trump also. The men that he was supposed to have in the RNC watching the chicken house weren’t watching the chicken house, and they oughta be taken in back of that shed and shot in the back of the head execution style because they fell down on their duty and let this happen,” stated Ash.
Trump had an opportunity to bring Ash’s hand-picked Prebius replacement into his fold earlier this year and passed on it.
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