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Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Greenbriar Farm in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 28, 2024.
CNN
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Donald Trump’s top advisers are planning a major overhaul of the Republican platform, significantly scaling it back and refocusing the GOP on the policies of the former president’s second term.
A Thursday memo from Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles criticized past platform plans as too long and too heavily influenced by special interests and outside groups. A “clear, concise and understandable” platform would be easier for voters to understand and harder for political opponents to attack, the campaigns wrote.
“Recognizing that publishing an unnecessarily lengthy paper would fuel the fires of misinformation and misrepresentation to our opponents’ voters,” the memo said, “we intend to offer a concise policy platform that is consistent with President Trump’s beliefs about America’s future and his vision for the American people.”
The memo, obtained by CNN on Saturday, was first reported by The New York Times.
The party’s most recent platform, written in 2016 and reapproved in 2020, is 66 pages long. The goal for the next platform is a concise document of “several dozen pages,” written in clearer language and likely to reflect Trump’s top priorities, according to a person familiar with the planning.
The person also said that when a platform committee convened ahead of previous conventions, the meetings were attended by lobbyists and special interests who sought to include specific items for their clients in the platform. LaCivita and Wiles wrote that they wanted a platform that would “free the party from the shackles of Washington jargon and lobbyist influence.”
The memo comes as conservative groups grow increasingly uneasy about the platform’s direction ahead of next month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Anti-abortion groups in particular are concerned that Thursday’s memo signals Trump’s intention to remove a longstanding platform promise to end a federal abortion ban and an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gives unborn children the same rights as human beings.
“The party is totally united and removing the pro-life language risks splitting the party,” said one Trump supporter who is deeply involved in the anti-abortion movement and is familiar with LaCivita and Wiles’ memo.
The current platform also expresses the party’s opposition to same-sex marriage and new gun control laws, as well as reforms to Medicare and Social Security for people under age 55, some of which have become fodder for Democratic messaging in recent election cycles.
The Trump campaign is particularly aware that Democrats have weaponized Republican policies in the past and is trying to avoid a lengthy document riddled with potential landmines for the former president.
“This platform is an opportunity to articulate our vision and provide a framework for policymaking that rejects the influence of any special interests that would steer public policy away from our clear and straightforward purpose,” LaCivita and Wiles wrote.
But by setting the marker ahead of next month’s convention, the Trump campaign is further asserting its dominance over a party that is more fully under his control. Already this year, Trump ousted former party chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and installed close allies — his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and North Carolina Republican leader Michael Whatley — at the top of the GOP.
The platform committee will be led by three of Trump’s closest aides: Randy Evans, Trump’s former ambassador to Luxembourg; Russell Vought, a senior Trump administration official; and Ed Martin, head of the right-wing interest group Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and author of the 2016 book “Why Conservatives Are Trump.”
The committee will meet behind closed doors ahead of the party’s convention, which begins July 15. Unlike previous years, the committee’s deliberations will not be broadcast on C-SPAN, according to sources.
This headline has been updated.
