Liz Harrington, national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, delved into the specifics of the GOP’s decision to move the celebration of President Trump’s nomination to Jacksonville, Florida, during a Friday appearance on Breitbart News Daily, explaining that “a little bit of business” will occur in Charlotte but emphasizing that the “fun stuff” is moving to the River City.
“Unfortunately the Democrat governor was unwilling to work with us, barely whatsoever, to try to get our convention there that we planned for years,” Harrington told Breitbart New Daily host and Editor-in Chief Alex Marlow. “We’ll do the main event in Jacksonville, and we’re really looking forward to it.”
Organizers were getting no reassurance from the governor, “whose rules as they state right now is you can only have ten people to a room,” she explained. “That’s obviously not tenable to us.”
Harrington said the GOP wanted to work with local officials, offering a range of proposals to ensure the safety of attendees, but the governor was “very adamant about having ‘very limited numbers of people.'”
“We wanted to work with them. We wanted to be flexible and have a lot of different requirements in place. We hired a health expert. We wanted to propose health screenings on top of the Secret Service screening. We came up with a lot of common sense solutions, and yet Gov. Cooper — along with a lot of Democrat governors, I think you’re seeing across this country are just slow walking the reopening of their state,” she continued. “They’re happy to go out and march with protesters last week, but yet he’s very adamant about having ‘very limited numbers of people’ when it comes to a Republican convention in late August. So that’s why we had to move.”
Once they realized the governor would not work with them, the RNC looked elsewhere “to figure out what would be best for our needs, and we landed in Jacksonville.”
The spokeswoman went over some of the details and logistics of the event, explaining that the “business side” of things — such as meetings and “behind the scenes stuff” that does not typically occur on TV– will remain in Charlotte. Harrington said 336 delegates will meet in Charlotte, and the rest will meet by proxy to officially renominate Trump. However, they are not adopting a new party platform because of the change, which would have a small minority of delegates making those decisions.
“It’s not that we’re using the old one. There’s just not going to be a new one adopted,” she explained.
Nonetheless, the speeches, events, radio row, and “fun stuff” will occur in Jacksonville, Harrington said, noting the major contrast in working with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Mayor Lenny Curry (R), both of whom she said welcomed them with open arms, “allowing us to give great economic impacts to their city and state.”
“We’re looking at $100 million by thousands and thousands of people gathering, and we’re really excited about that, because we want to get back to normal,” she continued. “We don’t want to throw out our entire way of life because of a pandemic from Communist China. It’s just not going to happen.”
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.