Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele took to the airwaves on Tuesday to defend his legacy, claiming his successor Reince Priebus was “dumping” on him for the GOP’s problems and not taking responsibility for his own role in the party’s financial troubles.
“I kept my mouth shut for two years because, hey, I’m a party guy,” Steele said Tuesday
on WMAL Radio in Washington, D.C. “But you know what, at the end of the day, you say to yourself, ‘They’re dumping on you, they’re crapping on your legacy, they’re giving you crap for stuff that they didn’t want to do in the first place.’”
Steele — RNC chairman from 2009-2011 — said Priebus, who was his general counsel, was privy to every decision he made as chairman, and approved the plan to carry a $20 million debt to help take back control of the House in the 2010 elections.
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“I mean, what annoys the heck out of me is that for two years Reince Priebus was in every room I was in, a part of every major decision I made for how much money we would spend, what we would spend that money on, what the priorities of the RNC would be,” said Steele.
“For him to sit there and act like he had nothing to do with it and that somehow he inherited this mess that he helped create, to me is just pure BS,” he said.
The comments were the latest chapter in a public war of words between the two. Last week, Steele referred to Priebus and other RNC officials as “numbnuts” for their proposal to spend $10 million on a 50-state minority-outreach effort that Steele insisted was simply a repeat of what he had done at the RNC in 2010.
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