Despite its determination to undo President Obama's legacy, it looks like Team Trump wants to emulate the outgoing president's example when it comes to grassroots organizing.
According to a report by Politico on Wednesday, Trump advisers like Kellyanne Conway are encouraging the president-elect to create a super PAC or nonprofit like Organizing for America (OFA), the nonprofit that President Obama established to keep grassroots progressives, who were instrumental in his election during the 2008 campaign, engaged.
In Trump's case, the OFA-like group would aim to organize and galvanize the millions of ordinary Americans who were attracted to the Republican's right-wing populist message. Because Trump's ideology doesn't entirely mesh with that of the Republican Party establishment (particularly on issues like foreign policy and trade), it may even be more incumbent upon him to do this than it was for Team Obama eight years ago.
“You need someone who everyone knows is trusted by the president, who is an insider who’s on the outside doing that,” one Trump adviser told Politico, also adding that it's unclear who would lead the group and that "the fear is that we would be cannibalizing ourselves."
Despite the early rumblings about creating an alt right equivalent to OFA, Team Trump is still by all accounts primarily focused on staffing the impending Trump administration. The transition process has up to this point been a contentious one, with establishment Republicans being frozen out by advisers like Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and controversy erupting over his appointment of the allegedly racist and fascist former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon as his chief strategist.
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