Former RNC chair: ‘Trumpification’ of GOP deadly to party’s future

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele on Monday said he sees the “Trumpification” of the GOP as deadly to the party’s future.

“This Trumpification of the party is not just dangerous, it’s deadly to its future, and I think that people have to be aware of that,” Steele said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“I always talked about taking the party outside of its comfort zone. Well, what’s happening now is that it has retrenched into a very comfortable corner, and everything outside of that corner is not good for it, in its view. It wants to attack it, it wants to avoid it, it doesn’t want to engage with it in an open way,” he continued. 

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Steele’s comments come days after the communications director for the Conservative Political Action Conference, Ian Walters, said that Steele was picked as RNC chairman because “he was a black guy.”

“This president has given countenance to what you saw unfold on that stage,” Steele said, referring to the comments. 

Steele, a frequent critic of the president, sparred with the chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp, over the comments on Saturday.

“Those words that tumbled out of his mouth, I believed were unfortunate words,” Schlapp said, referring to Walters’s remarks. 

“They were stupid. It’s not ‘unfortunate,’ ” Steele fired back. “Call it what it is. It is stupid to sit there and say that we elected a black man chairman of the party and that was a mistake. Do you know how that sounds to the black community?”

“I’ve spent 41 years in this party. Forty-one, all right?” Steele said. “I have taken crap you have no idea about, and I have carried this baggage. And for him to stand on that stage and denigrate my service to this party, and for you as a friend to sit there and go, ‘Well, you have been critical of this party,'” Steele said.