'The stain is on you': Ex-RNC chair slams GOP for silence on Trump's call for blood purity
The Republican Party at large owns former President Donald Trump's increasing descent into fascistic and racist rhetoric, former GOP chair Michael Steele told MSNBC's Katie Phang on Monday.
This comes as Trump stated at a rally that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," language that has clear roots in Nazi Germany — and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) defended it furiously when cornered by reporters.
"Michael, it is not just Trump that's doing the bad thing, it's the enablers that are doing the bad thing," said Phang. "We all know why they are kissing the proverbial you know what. And, when you have somebody like Marc Short saying 'I doubt that Trump has read Mein Kampf,' I don't disagree with him, I don't think he has the capacity to read, but it is not the point. These people enable Trump to be able to say this with zero consequence."
"Well, that is a critical point here because they have to rationalize their own role in all of this," said Steele. "When it all comes to this conversation where you have the leading candidate for the Republican Party telling Americans he is going to be retribution for Americans who agree with him, he's going to be the guy who's going to go fight and take people out, that immigrants and others come into this country, whether from Africa or from other parts of the world, are 'poisoning the American bloodstream,' yeah, what is Lindsey Graham going to say to that except sort of try to dumb it down and make it all go away with some offhanded comments."
At the end of the day, said Steele, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) put it succinctly during hearings of the House Select Committee: "The reality of it is that the stain is on you ... and no matter how you try to avoid it or dress it up or put a clean shirt on, it is on you. It is embedded in your bloodstream because you are the one who injected the poison. So, the reality of it is, we've got to call that out."
"We've got to be honest about that because I think there are things greater at stake for us as a country," Steele added. "Each one of us on this screen right now [will] suffer consequences of Donald Trump's second term. Because we have stood up against this kind of hot rhetoric, destructive rhetoric, this very divisive racist rhetoric ... there is nothing good that will come from it. The man means what he said. He means what he says. A lot of people want to say, 'Oh, he hasn't read' or 'hasn't believed it.' Yes, he does. Yes, he does."
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