Michael Steele: Trump Did Not Give Voters A Reason To Reelect Him

Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:17 pm

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele summed up the final presidential debate as Trump not giving voters a reason to reelect him.

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Steele said on MSNBC:

For me, this debate boiled down to one thing. It wasn’t the environment. It wasn’t foreign policy. It wasn’t any of that. It was covid. It was covid before he came to this debate. It was covid during this debate, and it’s covid going out of this debate. Because at the end of the day, families are still dealing with covid-19. And the economic, the social unrest and all the ancillary pieces that pull off of that just tighten that political noose around Donald Trump’s political opportunity. And slowly and methodically strangles it.

He did not give this country a reason to re-elect him. Yes, he was calmer. He was more, you know — less formulaic, less in your face. So, the meds worked. But the conversation didn’t change. And I think that’s something a lot of folks will take away from this final debate.

The senator put it very precisely for a lot of folks out there. I can’t hug my grandchildren. And Donald Trump, that’s your fault. I can’t restart my business. And Donald Trump, yeah, that’s on you too. And I thought vice president Biden framed that part of that discussion very precisely. You could feel what he was saying, and you could see Donald Trump reel from it. When he starts talking about, you know, PPEs and ventilators, people are going, dude, what are you talking about, right? So, I think — I think for — for all that this debate stood for, it boiled down to covid-19. And the president still has no answer for it.

Trump lost the debate in the first fifteen minutes. He couldn’t defend the deaths of over 220,000 Americans on his watch. He couldn’t justify his failed response to the pandemic, and outside of empty promises that things are getting better, he had no plan to get the virus under control and the nation back to normal.

Kids might not trick or treat this year. Families will spend Thanksgiving and Christmas apart. Some people will never see their loved ones again who lost their lives in this pandemic. Trump is to blame for all of it.

No matter how hard he tries to change the subject to anything else, Trump can’t hide from his responsibility for the death and destruction that has been caused by the pandemic that he allowed to flourish.

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Jason Easley

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