A long Friday read in the Washington Post details the steady deterioration of the relationship between disgraced former President Trump and his now-disfavored supplicant, the soon-to-be-former RNC chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel, over the last year, though his private complaints about the woman who literally changed her name to please him began festering after his humiliating defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Best to just go with the lowlights linearly:

“People are really mad at you. They’re mad at you,” Trump warned Ronna during a number of phone calls in which he pressured her to cancel the primary debates, effectively declaring him the winner before the first votes had even been cast. Ronna’s defense was the debates were actually helping him, which isn’t that hard to argue with judging by the way they went, but sources say it was a major factor in Trump’s decision to replace her. Then of course there was all the money the RNC doesn’t have because Trump’s operation is sucking it up, him blaming her for defeats in 2022 and 2023 that were unquestionably much more his fault, and complaining from donors and allies.

First and foremost however the central grievance of the entire universe of Republican politics, the 2020 election. Before election day it was that she was sending too much money to downballot Republican candidates and not Trump’s campaign. After election day it was you already guessed it.

“She’s not good on election integrity,” Trump has told his minions regularly since, bitter over Ronna having largely backing out of the fight after the Rudy hair melt press conference at the party’s headquarters in late November 2020. A factor in Donald’s decision to select North Carolina GOP chair Mike Whatley to replace her was that “they” didn’t find boxes of ballots to swing the Tar Heel State to swing it to Biden late on election night. Ronna’s from Michigan and you know the rest.

“McDaniel repeatedly told Trump that she was going to work harder ahead of 2024 on ‘election integrity’ and tried to defend her actions in 2020. The party has filed 77 lawsuits in the 2024 cycle and created a permanent ‘Election Integrity Department,’ RNC officials said. But in some cases, McDaniel told others that she just couldn’t back Trump’s most outlandish claims,” the Post writes in one paragraph that pretty neatly summarizes that crucial ingredient to the split.