Want to make it in the Republican party? Pledge allegiance to the Big Lie

‘Trump fired McDaniel because she was insufficiently loyal to him. But she was too loyal to him to retain any integrity for herself.’ Photograph: Mike Stewart/AP

If you’re seeking employment at the Republican National Committee (RNC), you’re likely to be asked in your job interview if you believe the 2020 election was stolen. And if you say no, well, you might as well seek a job with George Santos.

After a Trump-backed purge of the RNC this month, agreeing to the false claim has become a kind of litmus test for gaining employment – no less than it’s become a litmus test for running for public office as a Republican.

Even if you already have a job at the RNC, you might lose it if you don’t agree to the lie. According to the Washington Post, Trump advisers have been quizzing multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the last presidential election.

Hell, even if you’ve repeated the lie multiple times in the media, you might still lose your RNC job. Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel lost her job even though she continued to echo Trump’s election lies.

McDaniel even participated in a 17 November 2020 phone call in which Trump pressured two Republican members of the Wayne county board of canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by the Detroit News. None of this was enough to save her.

Yet McDaniel now finds herself in the same integrity trap that many US news organizations have faced ever since Trump came to power.

Trump fired McDaniel because she was insufficiently loyal to him. But she was too loyal to him to retain any integrity for herself.

McDaniel was hired by NBC last week as a paid contributor until network anchors and reporters revolted. They argued that by hiring her, NBC gave a green light for election deniers to spread lies as paid contributors. On Tuesday, NBC fired her.

The New York Times deadpanned that the embarrassing episode underscores the challenge to news organizations “of fairly representing … pro-Trump viewpoints in their coverage”.

Wrong. The real problem is there can’t be any “fair” representation of pro-Trump Republican viewpoints as long as those viewpoints are centered on the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

A party that baselessly denies the outcome of an election has no legitimate claim to be “represented” in a news organization. Nor can anyone who has gone along with the lie, including the former head of the Republican National Committee, expect a job with a news organization.

The fact is, neither NBC nor any other legitimate news organization can find someone with integrity who can defend Trump or act as a mouthpiece for the Republican party he now controls, because no one with integrity would do so.

“Wow!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday. “Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”

Trump understated the dilemma. The entire Maga Republican party is now in Never Neverland. And it’s a place no one with a shred of integrity would want to be.

So be careful with that RNC job interview.