Former RNC Chair Michael Steele: Republicans and Trump Are ‘Stuck in 2016’

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele argued on Friday that the Republican leadership is still stuck in 2016 as it pursues investigations of Hillary Clinton. Steele told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the country had moved on but President Donald Trump and his party hadn’t.

MSNBC host Willie Geist asked Steele about recent remarks from Republicans following Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power. Some in the GOP punted to Clinton rather than give a direct rebuke of the President.

“It is beyond pathetic and it speaks volumes about how much Hillary still resides in the heads of virtually every Republican on Capitol Hill,” Steele said.

“And they don’t need the prompting from Donald Trump to go to the Hillary thing and start talking about her. But it does expose, going back to how we started this hour, why the numbers are showing what they’re showing in states like Iowa, in Georgia, Texas. The American people have seen this, and they’ve heard the platitudes, they’ve heard the excuses and they’ve heard shifting the responsibility. At some point the American people want their leaders to account for what’s happening.”

“And when you have the President of the United States come out and say that we’ll just get rid of the ballots and then we’ll just have the transition that I want, which means that I win, that’s unnerving. And I think you’re going to see a further erosion in this space, along these lines because it’s not enough to point back at Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s not enough to drone on and on about her emails. You’ve got investigations right now going on on Capitol Hill into what by Republicans? What?”

“Stuff that happened that no-one is talking about now, no-one cares about, you’re going to dredge this up. That’s going to be your October surprise and you think that’s going to help Donald Trump?”

“The country has moved on, and these men are stuck in 2016. They’re struck where Trump is stuck. And they don’t have the wherewithal, the capacity, the ability to think themselves out of it. Trump is going on signing an executive order in which he’s now going to give every American access, who has preexisting conditions, access to health care, while his administration is before the Supreme Court trying to get rid of the very thing he’s just writing an executive order on.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.