President Donald Trump doesn't stand for true conservative principles, former Washington State Republican Party chair Chris Vance told an MSNBC roundtable on Thursday evening — and the GOP is deluding itself to believe that's the case.
Vance was concurring with former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, a fellow Trump-skeptic and outspoken critic of the current state of his party.
"I think there's — throughout all of this, the narrative has been defined largely by Trump and MAGA about what conservatism is," said Steele. "Folks, I'm telling you, this ain't it. I mean, you know, the more traditional fight between liberals and conservatives in the past, over the past 30 years has never looked anything like this."
"No, that's right," agreed Vance. "And so, almost exactly a year ago, Senator John Danforth and a whole bunch of other folks, including yourself, formed Our Republican Legacy, a group to fight back against this sort of thing, to be a catalyst to bring their party back to traditional principles. They formed it in the middle of the campaign cycle. You know, now we're really pumping it up and building it up. We had a huge event here in town."
EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade
"One of those principles is being a fiscal conservative," Vance continued. "Now, our party hasn't always been good on deficits, but they've at least tried. I mean, Ronald Reagan cut taxes, and then later realized he had to raise taxes to get the deficit under control. This guy is cutting revenues when we already have a massive deficit. And that is not conservatism. And tariffs are not conservative. Abandoning our allies to Russia is not conservative."
Despite that, Vance added, "There's so many Republicans out there who want to believe that Trump is something that he is not, that they think he's a conservative."
Watch the video below via MSNBC or at the link here.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
