Politics

Michael Steele: ‘Reince Priebus was my right hand … recommended to me to go into debt’ [VIDEO]

Vince Coglianese Editorial Director
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Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Tuesday that current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was his “right hand” when Steele led the organization from 2009 through 2011, making claims that Priebus simply inherited the groups $24 million debt “pure B.S.”

Steele made the comments while co-hosting WMAL’s “Mornings on the Mall” radio program in Washington, D.C.:

“The bottom line — Reince Priebus was my right hand. 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.

“And for him to stand up there and pretend that he wasn’t in the room, that he had no say in the decision making process, and that the so-called debt that he inherited was the one that — as a member of the RNC, he voted for, number one. Number two, he recommended to me to go into debt. And 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 B.S.

“And I kept my mouth shut for two years because, hey, I’m a party guy. 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: coalitions, expanding media, social media networks. They virtually ran my guy out of town. They didn’t want to support him. The coalitions department — I had to fight every year for the measly $900,000 that we put into building 185,000 volunteers around the country, as part of our coalition network.

“Now they want to spend $10 million. So let me get this straight: you spend $10 million dollars to find out that we have a problem? Hello? You know? Don’t get me started.”

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