Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, referred to presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump as a “visceral animal” after Donald Trump shared a video of an image on the tailgate of a truck showing President Joe Biden hogtied in the bed of a pickup truck.
Steele, now a political analyst for MSNBC, described Trump’s social media behavior during a segment on “The Weekend” program.
“That concept [thinking before speaking] is way above Donald Trump’s paygrade, or I think, intellectual capacity, because he’s a visceral animal, politically and in business. He feels that what he says is truth, and I think that is part of the problem in this environment, is he thinks it’s truth what he’s saying.”
During the conversation, Steele insinuated that the legal system has more or less given Trump the freedom to attack people such as Judge Juan Merchan and his daughter.
Merchan, who is presiding over the trial relating to Trump’s hush money payments, issued a gag order which limits what Trump can say publicly about the case.
In a recent social media update, the ex-president insinuated, without substantiation, that Judge Merchan was capitulating to the political agenda of his daughter, a Democratic political consultant. Additionally, he said—claims later refuted by court authorities—that she had shared a photo on social media depicting Trump behind bars.
The gag order, however, did not extend to talking about Merchan and his family, which Steele accused Trump of cynically exploiting.
Steele said he was confused as to why the courts seemed reluctant to build clear guardrails around Trump. “I mean, I don’t get it at all. I’m confused about how the system still does not respond to the thing in front of it,” he said.
The Biden campaign responded to Trump’s post by calling back to a debate during the 2020 election moderated by Chris Wallace when Trump told the Proud Boys, a far-right militia group, to stand back and stand by.
“This image from Donald Trump is the type of crap you post when you’re calling for a bloodbath or when you tell the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by,’” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler told ABC News.
Tyler was referring to the Jan. 6 insurrection, which Trump has been accused of inciting through his rhetoric. “Trump is regularly inciting political violence, and it’s time people take him seriously — just ask the Capitol police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on January 6.”
Meanwhile, NBC News reports that
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung defended Trump, saying, “That picture was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway.” Cheung also claimed Democrats were calling for violence against Trump, saying, “Democrats and crazed lunatics are actually weaponizing the justice system against him.”RELATED CONTENT: Michael Steele Criticizes Trump Over Comments About Black Voters