Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele was the victim of a racist attack by CPAC Communications Director Ian Walters who then tried to blame his racist language on former president Barack Obama.
Jon Levine of The Wrap tweeted:
CPAC communication director Ian Walters at Reagan dinner
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to doâ€
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— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) February 24, 2018
Steele responded on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell:
Former RNC Chair Michael Steele tells @JoyAnnReid that CPAC communications director tried to blame Obama for his racist attack on Steele. (And Republicans wonder why they get called racist). pic.twitter.com/VWaQCP3dSf
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 24, 2018
Steele said that Walters tried to blame Obama when he called him, “He did call and tried to explain himself. He relaid it back to the Barack Obama election. And he said at one point, I apologize. And I said, that’s not acceptable, that’s not enough.”
The Obama made me a racist card really doesn’t work.
Republicans express shock that the rest of the country calls them racist, but the fact that a conservative official would make such a remark is proof that the party’s racism isn’t some political strategy. It is an institutional belief. Donald Trump is a very large symptom of an ugly disease that started to come to the surface after Obama was elected.
The racists used to be the fringe of the Republican Party. They were the people that Bush campaign blew dog whistles at during the South Carolina primary in 2000, but now they are the Republican Party.
The message to a decent person like Michael Steele is that he doesn’t belong in Trump’s Republican Party, because the racists are running the GOP now, and their attitude of discrimination is why the Republican Party is dying a little more each day under Donald Trump.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
