Ronna McDaniel seeks to restore a fractious GOP Josh Dawsey and Manuel Roig-Franzia, The Washington Post Jan. 29, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail Air Force One was fueled and ready for the final flight. This was the end for Donald Trump, the last hours of a progressively more noxious and isolated presidency. But as he was poised to fly south from Joint Base Andrews into the uncertainty of his after-times, Ronna McDaniel was able to get him on the line. McDaniel, the unfailingly amiable chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, had stood by Trump, even as a trickle of GOP luminaries abandoned him. She had been Trump's handpicked choice to lead the GOP four years earlier, and she had been loyal up to a point: gently critical of his most profane outbursts and divisive rhetoric, but buoyantly supportive of his policies and his often erratic conduct in office.