“I don’t think Trump is fully aware of that plan. When he finds out, he’s not going to be happy at all,” a Republican operative in close contact with the Trump campaign said of the multi-million dollar effort. The cost is exorbitant compared to traditional door-knocking efforts, with little guarantee of success, the operative noted. When Trump learns of the ambitious spending plan, funded by donors who would otherwise give directly to his campaign, they predicted, the former president “will be pissed out of his mind.”

Kirk strongly disagrees with that sentiment. “Everything we do,” he told RCP, “is additive.” Turning Point USA has not yet raised the $108 million, but Kirk says that by April his organization “will be able to celebrate” having as many as 600 full-time “ballot chasers” in battleground states. He said the goal was “to do what the RNC should have been doing for quite some time.”

He doesn’t make much of the criticism that TPUSA is vacuuming up dollars that would otherwise go to Trump entities. Neither does the former president, Kirk said. “I’d imagine, seeing that the president has spoken at a lot of our events and been vocally supportive,” Kirk said, “that’s evidence that he likes what we’re doing and wants to see it grow and flourish.”

Along with Candace Owens, who has since left TPUSA for the Daily Wire, Kirk said his organization has focused on “Blexit,” a movement to encourage black voters to exit the Democratic Party. Pointing to that movement as well as TPUSA’s outreach on historically black college campuses, Kirk dismissed predictions that his commentary would diminish Trump’s support with black voters. “I don’t see any evidence of that,” he said, adding that he remains “willing to receive all the criticism and consider it.”

“We take on tough topics, and when you take on tough topics, sometimes people disagree. That is fine,” Kirk said of his comments concerning MLK and corporate diversity programs. He then pointed to Trump, adding “I think the president is actually a great example of someone who has taken on tough topics and has really seen a harvest from it.”

“We are just going to ignore the noise. We know that our focus and emphasis on RNC leadership comes at price,” Kirk concluded. “It’s not a surprise, I’d imagine, that part of this stems from that but we’re just going to keep building.”

Kirk was one of the first to float Lara Trump as the next RNC chair in an interview with the New York Times. The former president may have taken the advice. He nominated Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina GOP, to replace McDaniel as national chair last week and then nominated his daughter-in-law to be co-chair.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Philip Wegmann is White House Correspondent for Real Clear Politics. He previously wrote for The Washington Examiner and has done investigative reporting on congressional corruption and institutional malfeasance.