Trump calls for RNC to approve ‘new and updated platform’

President Trump called on the Republican National Committee (RNC) on Friday to pass an updated platform after the party’s executive committee moved this week to keep its 2016 platform through 2024. 

“The Republican Party has not yet voted on a Platform,” Trump tweeted. “No rush. I prefer a new and updated Platform, short form, if possible.”

The Republican Party has not yet voted on a Platform. No rush. I prefer a new and updated Platform, short form, if possible.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2020

The party’s current platform, adopted in 2016, is rife with condemnations of the “current” president — at the time, former President Obama — and contains other language that now seems outdated.

But the language hasn’t been changed, and the committee’s decision to move large portions of its national convention from Charlotte, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., means that the convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform.

The decision to move the convention came after North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said that the RNC would have to begin planning for a scaled-back convention in Charlotte due to the ongoing public health risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic. 

After that, Trump, intent on having a full-scale convention, announced that the party would begin looking for a new city to host the gathering. The RNC announced on Thursday that it had settled on Jacksonville. 

The New York Times reported on Thursday that before the RNC’s decision to relocate the national convention, Trump campaign officials and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had been weighing possible options for a new or modified party platform.

One of those options, according to the Times’s report, was an abridged version of the platform adopted in 2016.