Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele speaking with attendees at the 2017 National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Annual Conference at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Image via Gage Skidmore.
Back in 2003 — three years after his first presidential run and 13 years before he first won the GOP presidential nomination — Donald Trump read the 1985 children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" to a group of preschoolers as part of Starbucks' Sixth Annual All Books for Children Book Drive.
In an op-ed published by MSNBC on May 2, former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele explains why the 40-year-old book offers lessons that are applicable to Trump's second presidency.
"If you have kids or if you've been a kid yourself recently," Steele explains, "you've probably heard of the famous children's book 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.' It's the cautionary tale about how ceding a trifle of something — such as a cookie — to a mouse will only lead to more demands and expectations, each harder to satisfy than the last. Perhaps when Donald Trump read this book to a group of children for a photo-op as a private citizen back in 2003, he inverted its original lesson."
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Steele adds, "Rather than heeding the caution the book imposes on the reader about the slippery slope of capitulation, he may have interpreted the mouse's journey as aspirational — a blueprint for expanding his power that he is now applying to our entire system of governance."
Steele, a Never Trump conservative and MSNBC host, emphasizes that CE0s, law firms and law firms who try to placate Trump won't make life easier for themselves.
"These days, Trump is getting offered much bigger rewards than cookies," the former RNC chairman warns, "and the demands are growing broader and more unfeasible. We've seen this unfold recently as Trump bent Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to his will. Maybe Bezos didn't see much potential for harm when he allegedly prevented The Washington Post's editorial board from endorsing then-Vice President Kamala Harris for president, or donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund and then attended the actual event with a prime spot."
Steele continues, "That was roughly 100 days ago, a period of time in which Business Insider estimates Bezos has lost $36 billion. You would think a poor return on investment would be grounds for getting out of a deal with Trump, but think again. Just this week, the White House fumed at the mere idea that Amazon might be considering listing import charges, even just on one of its imprint stores, Amazon Haul."
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The "demands" of the mouse that author Laura Joffe Numeroff described in "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," Steele notes, were unending — and the same applies to Trump.
"Now, to be fair, not everyone is bending the knee to Trump, however," Steele observes. "Some, such as Harvard University, the Perkins Coie and WilmerHale law firms and everyday Americans, are standing up to him. But if we want to stop that hamster wheel of capitulation, it will take much more than patches of scattered opposition to slow Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. It will take a resounding, united 'No' to every Trump demand for more cookies ... and maybe a kindergarten level of reading comprehension.
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Michael Steele's full MSNBC column is available at this link.