Send up a little cheer for Michael Steele, Maryland’s lieutenant governor from 2003-2007 and former Republic National Committee chair. He seems to know political hypocrisy when he sees it.
Over the past two years of President Donald Trump’s political rise, Steele has watched closely as evangelical Christian leaders tossed aside their classic notions of morality to give the commander-in-chief a heavenly pass on all of his high-profile personal transgressions.
But the other night, on the MSNBC talk show “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” where he’s a regular commentator, Steele declared that he’s had enough. On Monday, Tony Perkins, head of the conservative Christian nonprofit Family Research Council, said Trump gets “a mulligan” – that’s a golf term for a do-over – over allegations that he paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn star named Stormy Daniels to keep quiet over their alleged affair.
That was enough for Steele, who’s noticed as numerous evangelical leaders, and large numbers of their followers, supported Trump during the presidential campaign and helped vote him into office despite his audio-taped sexual boasting, his multiple marriages and his racist remarks.
“I have a very simple admonition at this point,” Steele told Matthews, in response to Perkins’ defense of Trump. “Just shut the hell up.
“After telling me how to live my life, who to love, what to believe, what not to believe, what to do and what not to do, and now you sit back and the prostitutes don’t matter? The grabbing the you-know-what doesn’t matter? The outright behavior and lies don’t matter? Just shut up.”
Steele is a smart fellow who’s made a career out of carefully bestriding two worlds. As lieutenant governor, he was that rare political specimen, a Republican African-American, which helped later when he was named RNC chairman. Those credentials later helped him get the gig with MSNBC, where he’s a familiar face.
MSNBC bends heavily liberal. But by showcasing Steele, they’re implying a certain political balance: “Look at us, we’ve got a Republican, and he’s a regular.”
But Steele’s not a doctrinaire conservative. There were times as lieutenant governor when he sounded like a liberal Democrat. And there have been times, as a political commentator, when he’s taken solid shots at Republicans.
During the last presidential campaign, Steele said Trump “captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life, and gave voice to it.”
He’s also said Trump doesn’t talk to him anymore. Well, we’ll see if evangelical leaders follow suit. At a time when so many Republican leaders have lost their voices, it’s nice to see Michael Steele’s is still being heard.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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