Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele on January 18, 2023 (Maryland GovPics/Flickr)
Ex-RNC Chair Michael Steele tore into President Donald Trump this week, asserting that his struggling endorsements are a sign that his influence is collapsing as his MAGA base grows "fractured and dissipated."
Trump has long boasted of his "kingmaker" status within the GOP, claiming that his endorsements are bulletproof in Republican primaries and using them to threaten lawmakers who step out of line. The current midterm cycle, however, has provided numerous examples of his waning influence, as it did on Tuesday, when his endorsed candidates fell short in Minnesota and South Carolina. Pillow salesman and election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell suffered a bruising loss in the GOP primary for the Minnesota gubernatorial race, while Sen. Darline Graham Nordone, who selected to finish her brother Lindsey Graham's final term, fell short of a definitive win in her primary, sending the race to a runoff.
During a panel segment on MS NOW's "On the Line" Wednesday, host Alicia Menendez noted how Trump seemed to try to obscure the failure of his South Carolina endorsement in particular, claiming to like all of the candidates, a move that signaled his growing insecurity.
"Heknows that this question ofwhether or not he can be akingmaker is now in the ether," Menendez suggested.
"It's very, very much in theether," Steele responded. "The MAGA base hasfractured and dissipated in anumber of ways for a number ofreasons. And... the biggerreasons are twofold. One is thedownward pressure of the economy on them. You know, itdidn't just hit democrats. Ithit them to imagine that. Andtwo, the Epstein files still play [as] a big, big narrative in that space. And so,you know that Trump tries tocloud the airwaves and createthe noise around elections andvoting and getting people riledup about something."
He continued: "But at theend of the day, you know, as hesaid, they're all trumpers, andhe doesn't really care one wayor the other who the nominee isto be. To be rather frank aboutit, this is the least... exciting and important thing in Donald Trump's universe,because it's not an art, it'snot a ballroom. It's notsomething he can build andconstruct. He has to actuallydeal with human beings. And hedoesn't really like that somuch. So the reality for him,for those candidates, is you'reout there swimming on your own."
Elsewhere in the segment, Steele also tore into Trump's endorsed candidate for governor in Wisconsin, Tom Tiffany, who won the party's nomination on Tuesday, saying it would be the "ultimate corruption" to put a known election denier in that office.
"It is the ultimatecorruption of the process inthe system," Steele said. "It is profoundly antithetical to whatthe citizens of that statedecided. And that then becomesa problem for that governor. Imean, you know, these thingsdon't happen in a vacuum. Youknow, if... in 2020, [Georgia Gov. Brad] Raffensperger and othersdecided, okay, we'll play with Donald Trump. You cannotdiscount the outrage from thecitizenry and the voters outthere when hearing that text or hearing those tapes,then realizing that theirgovernor cheated, stole thevotes from them."
He continued: "That's goingto be a real impact on thestate. And so what you'reseeing here... is theparty now is all about feedingthat chaos. If it doesn't getits way, it's all aboutfeeding that beast. That beastis Donald Trump, at the end ofthe day, giving him what hewants. But there areconsequences for that. We seesome of that play out already."