MSNBC's Michael Steele called out Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) for melodramatically ignoring evidence from the U.S. Capitol insurrection he helped incite.
The former chairman of the Republican National Committee harshly criticized the Missouri Republican and other GOP senators who helped inflame Donald Trump's supporters ahead of the Jan. 6 riot and then flagrantly ignored or disputed video and other evidence that showed the mob intended to kill members of Congress to stop the certification of the presidential election.
"Let's be a little more specific to the Republican senators that you have talked about in the last hour who clearly are unmoved by any of this," Steele told "Morning Joe." "It happened on your watch, and some of your colleagues in this chamber with you, they're complicit, as well. It's not just the Donald Trump piece, and I thought it was interesting how, and we saw at the end of the day how [Sen.] Mike Lee just kind of lost his mind because, guess what, they called you out, right? They put it you out in front of the country [that], yeah, you had a role in this, too."
"Josh Hawley, you are up there painting the toenails, baby, in the gallery," he added. "That's why you're not watching, because you know where your fingerprints have been, and that's the part of yesterday that I thought was really stunning."
Steele said the GOP senators seemed to be overestimating how much protection they had from the angry mob just because they were Republicans who supported the former president.
"There was that moment where they showed the video of folks outside screaming, 'Destroy the GOP, destroy the GOP,' and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Republican senators, the head of the party has a mob outside screaming for your head, what do you think about that?'"
"It's stunning the level of stupidity involved here by some members of my party," he added.
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