It looks like Joe Scarborough isn’t the only ex-GOP official now employed by MSNBC who is denouncing those Democrats who dare to question 81-year-old Joe Biden’s ability to run a successful re-election campaign. Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, now a weekend host on MSNBC, on Tuesday's Andrea Mitchell Reports told Democrats to “shut the hell up and get behind” Biden, claiming the President “is being bullied by some in his party because of one event.”
Steele also claimed, without any evidence, that the newly-unveiled Republican platform is a “lie,” saying the party is secretly still committed to a national ban on abortion (it’s not, to the chagrin of many pro-lifers) and wildly proclaimed that Republicans would push “an expansion of the Supreme Court under Donald Trump to solidify that conservative majority.”
Republicans have no such plan, but Democrats do. It’s called the Judiciary Act, and would add four Justices to the Court (bringing the total to 13) as a heavy-handed way to shift the balance of power without having to wait for new vacancies to arise.
Yet if it’s thuggish and extreme for Republicans to pack the Court (which they’re not doing), how is it not thuggish and extreme for Democrats to want to do the same exact thing?
Making the case for Biden, the ex-Republican scoffed that Biden’s inability to complete sentences at the debate “should have been no more than a weekend story” except for “media and political elites” finding other examples of Biden’s failures “that they now just want to sort of vomit on top of Joe.”
Mitchell asked Steele, “What do you think Joe Biden can do to rescue this situation?”
Steele replied: “Have Democrats shut the hell up and get behind him. The man said he is not going anywhere. All right? So take him at his word....When I was at the Moynihan train station coming back from our show on Saturday, I ran into an elderly Irish gentleman, who looked at me and said, ‘I just want to tell you something. Joe Biden is not anywhere. He is that 11-year-old kid with the stutter on the playground that was being bullied, and he is going to fight.’ That made me really kind of look at this situation a little bit different. Because in many respects, that’s what’s happening. He is being bullied by some in his party because of one event.”
“I think he is being ill-served right now by his party,” Steele continued. “I have my profound differences with Joe Biden on policy. But up against Donald Trump, 34 time serial sexual predator, convicted felon, give me the old guy. Because I think the country is pretty much kind of said that, as you see the fallout from this not registering the way it has with voters, as it has with the Democrats inside the party.”
Here’s the transcript of the relevant section of the July 9 edition of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports (click expand to read the full transcript):
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
7/9/2024
12:42 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: Michael, you were, of course, former head of the Republican National Committee, so what do you expect from the Republican convention, with the Democratic Party divided over its own, you know, the competence of its standard bearer.
MICHAEL STEELE: They [Republicans] are not divided over the incompetence of their standard bearer. They are all in. They have formalized and will make even more formal the elevation of a 34-time convicted felon, serial sexual predator and fraudster. Okay, that’s the nominee of my party. I do not support that individual, nor do I support the direction that this platform purportedly lays out for the wholesale, you know, sort of rounding up of immigrants and without any due process, putting them in concentration camps and shipping them out of the country. They are lying to the country, Donald Trump is, about where we are on women’s rights in the party. We are not backing off of a national ban. That’s very much what Project 2025, you know, as Kimberly noted; the Comstock Act and other elements will be in play. So it’s all a lie, right down to — as Donald Trump said, ‘I gotta win! I gotta win! So I’m gonna lie to you, and you’re gonna buy it.’
So that’s the expectation. And so I think you will see that play out in full color next week, Andrea, and how Americans consume that in the face of the Democrats’ circling their fire on Joe Biden, taking what should have been no more than a weekend story on the debate and turning it into a full-throated existential crisis within the Democratic Party, this storyline with Trump is going to play out in the, as a backdrop to that. And so it’s really an interesting twist going into this convention that the Republicans have sort of set up this sort of soft landing narrative on their platform, trying to play it off as not Project 2025, which it is; playing down abortion which, we know, they are going to go for a national ban when that’s presented; and even elements of the Supreme Court, Andrea — I fully anticipate Republicans to propose an expansion of the Supreme Court under Donald Trump to solidify that conservative majority.
MITCHELL: Michael, what do you think Joe Biden can do to rescue this situation?
STEELE: Have Democrats shut the hell up and get behind him. The man said he is not going anywhere. All right? So take him at his word. If you know anything about -- just put it this way. When I was at the Moynihan train station coming back from our show on Saturday, I ran into an elderly Irish gentleman, who looked at me and said, ‘I just want to tell you something. Joe Biden is not anywhere. He is that 11-year-old kid with the stutter on the playground that was being bullied, and he is going to fight.’ That made me really kind of look at this situation a little bit different. Because in many respects, that’s what’s happening. He is being bullied by some in his party because of one event. And if you thought it was all that bad, why didn’t a committee go to him in October of last year and say, ‘Sir, you need to stand down because we do not think you can win this race?’ They didn’t. They let 14 million Americans go through a primary process with him and others on the ballot and vote for him. And now these media and political elites have decided after one event, ‘Oh my God, there are all of these other events that no one talked about or put out in public,’ that they now just want to sort of vomit on top of Joe and think that those 14 million voters are just going to go, ‘Okay, we will swap him out.’ So I think he is being ill-served right now by his party.
I have my profound differences with Joe Biden on policy. But up against Donald Trump, 34 time serial sexual predator, convicted felon, give me the old guy. because I think the country is pretty much kind of said that, as you see the fallout from this not registering the way it has with voters, as it has with the Democrats inside the party.
