#ReplaceTrump? Sorry, Republicans, You’re Stuck With Him.

It’s not happening.

Mark Reinstein/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


With the Trump campaign in turmoil after a week filled with gaffes, bizarre feuds, and rumors of despondent staff (and it’s only Wednesday!), anti-Trump Republicans have once again begun floating the idea that Donald Trump could be replaced as the GOP nominee.

No. He can’t.

Party insiders might have been able to flex their political muscle to keep Trump from the nomination in the first place, but once the Republican National Convention last month formally nominated Trump, the mechanisms by which they can dump him evaporated—no matter how much anyone wants it to be otherwise. Speculation about the possibility that Trump could be removed began to build this morning after ABC’s John Karl reported that senior GOP officials were discussing how to replace Trump on the ballot should he withdraw from the race.

But that’s just it: Trump would have to drop out. He couldn’t be replaced against his will.

A Republican lawyer who has advised the Republican National Committee in previous election cycles told Mother Jones that there are zero options for the party to remove Trump.

“It seems that some outlets/blogs had some misleading headlines, insinuating that Trump could be ‘replaced,’ but that would be an incorrect assessment of the ABC interview,” the lawyer, who requested that his name not be printed, told Mother Jones in an email. “There’s no process under the Rules of the Republican Party for removing a nominee.”

Another GOP insider, attorney Henry Barbour (the nephew of former RNC chair Haley Barbour), was more succinct when asked to be interviewed about the possibility of the GOP replacing the man it crowned as nominee just two weeks ago.

“This is an absurd question,” he wrote in an email. “Sorry.”

The former RNC lawyer said there is a mechanism by which Trump can be replaced, if he voluntarily drops out. Rule 9 of the party’s internal rules stipulates that if a presidential or vice presidential nominee leaves the ticket, the 168 members of the RNC—not voters or delegates—would select a new nominee.

“This is all very hypothetical, but the key point is that the nominee can’t be ‘replaced,'” the lawyer says. “Rule 9 is only intended for filling a vacancy.”

But time is running out for the party to replace Trump even if he steps aside voluntarily. State deadlines for certifying names on the ballot are fast approaching, meaning that Trump’s name would likely remain on some states’ ballots even if he withdrew from the race. Texas, a must-win state for Republicans if they hope to take the White House, has an August 26 deadline for withdrawing. As the Daily Beast noted Wednesday, next week is the deadline for removing Trump from the ballot in reliably red Arkansas and Oklahoma, and swing state North Carolina needs the candidate’s name to be certified by this Friday, August 5.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate