Doland Trump has alarmed business groups throughout the election cycle. | AP Photo RNC taps groups reviled by Trump to write GOP platform But Republican leaders barely talk about the nominee as they meet with Republican-leaning business interests.

Republican Party leaders are courting Beltway insiders to help write a platform that wins over the special interests that Donald Trump regularly trashes on the campaign trail.

There’s just one thing: The Republican National Committee is barely talking about Trump as it meets with virtually every Republican-leaning business interest in town.


“They were not speaking about the nominee” — only the platform, said an attendee at one session. “That’s what they control.”

The RNC has organized as many as 10 closed-door huddles with business lobbyists to discuss the party's platform — and not incidentally, engage the business establishment, many of whom feel alienated by a candidate who calls for ripping up trade agreements and boycotting companies such as Apple and Carrier that run afoul of his positions.

"The platform committee is going to assemble a reasonable set of principles designed to make the GOP and convention delegates feel good about the foundation of the party,” said one GOP strategist, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly.

Nonetheless, the strategist added, “No reasonable Republican thinks the platform has any real heft, and hardly expects that it'll be something that Trump will care enough about to abide.”

One policy wonk suggested the platform is almost of greater interest in the case of a candidate who’s refused to offer the usual position papers on, say, health care, energy and transportation policy.

“In this case, since the candidate hasn’t really said what his policies are, it imbues the platform with more significance than it’s ever had before,” said Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute who was not invited to attend.

While the RNC has held similar meetings ahead of past national conventions, this year's sessions have taken on special significance as the party grapples with how to unite its fractured base — and especially, a skeptical business establishment that has helped bankroll past campaigns.

Trump has alarmed business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and National Association of Manufacturers, for instance, with his threat to walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to hike steep duties on Chinese and Mexican goods to try to narrow the trade deficit and discourage companies from moving jobs outside the United States.

Peter Allgeier, who stepped down in March as president of the Coalition of Services Industries, said business people “are pretty much aghast” at Trump’s dismissal of trade agreements.

“He says he will negotiate them better, but frankly I don’t think he’s really looked at them to make that kind of assessment. … People certainly don’t agree with his idea of throwing very high tariffs on our trading partners.”

The business community wants to see both the Republican and the Democratic candidates support a robust trade agenda, said Cal Cohen, president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, a nearly 50-year-old business group.

"It's one of a number of issues — certainly not the only one — that will determine the level of support by the business community for the Republican nominee," Cohen said.

An RNC official said the goal for the discussions is to involve a broad cross-section of groups.

"This process was designed to engage everyone from the grassroots level to top industry leaders. It is our responsibility to ensure that the platform process is inclusive," RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said.

Participants say they were not asked for financial support for the convention, but at least one industry official said he declined the invitation because he saw it as a "prelude to a money shakedown."

The first of the policy meetings occurred Thursday with a friendly crowd: energy industry lobbyists who are largely simpatico with Trump.

Trump delighted the industry with an energy speech in North Dakota last week that echoed GOP policy orthodoxy on fossil fuel development nearly verbatim. And an energy industry official who attended Thursday's session told POLITICO that most of the participants agreed Trump has largely won over the oil and gas sector.

"There was a good discussion [at the RNC meeting] about whether Trump set the right tone in his speech. The general consensus was yes," the source said, adding that there were few fireworks.

Another attendee said he expects the GOP's energy platform to closely resemble the one put forward in 2012, with a deeper focus on technology and full-throated opposition to environmental activists' campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Officials at the American Petroleum Institute, the Edison Electric Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Hudson Institute and the Institute for Energy Research were among the roughly two dozen people who attended the energy meeting.

Several major industry groups either did not attend or were not invited to the meetings. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (whose president, Mike Duncan, is the former head of the RNC) did not attend the energy meeting.

Another meeting Friday focused on health care, an area where Trump has often bucked GOP orthodoxy by praising Scotland’s universal health care system and backing the notion that Medicare should be able to negotiate drug prices — stances anathema to most Republicans.

But the bare-bones health care plan Trump released in March mirrors much of what’s in the current GOP platform. At the top of the list, of course: repealing Obamacare.

Most health care lobbyists described the session as an effort to give the influence industry a sense that it still has a seat at the table in what’s been a tumultuous campaign season.

“They don’t want people like us bitching about platform,” said one health care lobbyist who was invited.

The presumptive presidential nominee was brought up at one point during the 30 minute gathering. But that topic was quickly shot down by RNC staffers who stressed they were talking only about policy.

A couple of topics were broached that aren’t currently part of the GOP platform, according to one lobbyist who attended: combating the opioid abuse epidemic and making progress in treating Alzheimer’s disease.

Attendees were also directed not to discuss details of the gathering with reporters.

“They made a big deal about not talking to the press,” the lobbyist said.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, which played a crucial role in passing and implementing Obamacare, was on hand for the discussion, as was the American Hospital Association. The American Health Care Association, which represents the long-term-care industry, didn’t get an invite.

A more tense face-off is expected next week when RNC leaders meet with Washington's most prominent tech lobbyists. GOP leaders have long struggled to woo the liberal-leaning executives in the country's tech capital — but Trump's rise only has widened the schism.

Slated to attend a tech-and-telecom focused meeting Monday are groups like the Internet Association and the Information Technology Industry Council, which represent companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and more.

They've lobbied Washington together for years in pursuit of changes to the country's immigration laws, hoping to attract more science, tech, engineering and math students to study then stay in the United States — and Republicans have generally been receptive, even including high-skilled immigration reforms in their 2012 policy platform.

But Trump has sent mixed signals on the issue, first opposing changes that would increase the ranks of foreign engineers and students before suddenly announcing at a debate he supported them. The uncertainty has frustrated the tech industry, and Trump's comments on deporting undocumented workers and building a wall along the Mexican border even drew a sharp rebuke from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year.

The biggest technology companies have been just as unified in their campaign for surveillance reforms — and their opposition to the federal government's attempts to gain greater access to data and devices. Trump, though, has supported efforts to expand law enforcement's powers, even criticizing Apple CEO Tim Cook when his company resisted the FBI's efforts to force it to unlock a password-protected iPhone tied to the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Doug Palmer, Paul Demko, Brian Mahoney and Victoria Guida contributed to this story.