Ex-RNC Chair Warns Republican Party Is Going To Own' Trump's Actions On Iran

Michael Steele , the former chair of the Republican National Committee , has warned the GOP of the possible long-term consequences of backing President Donald Trump over military action against Iran.

“The Republican Party is going to own this, and they need to be careful,” Steele told The Washington Post on Monday.

“You can cheerlead the president, but do you really know what he wants to do here, in the middle of a 17-year narrative, and how it’ll play out?” Steele added. “No, you don’t.”

The Post’s article detailed how the escalation in tensions between the U.S. and Iran following Friday’s U.S. airstrike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani  could affect Trump’s reelection.

Steele served as the RNC chair from 2009 to 2011 and in the Trump era has become one of the GOP’s staunchest critics. Last month, he said the current Republican Party is “somewhat irrelevant in the overall scheme of democracy.” 

“Because we’ve taken ourselves so far outside of — it’s not even mainstream, we’re not even near a stream,” he said. “We’re just kind of standing in the middle of nowhere with Donald Trump screaming at us.”

He also called the party “SOBs” for bulk-buying thousands of copies of Donald Trump Jr. ’s book “Triggered” and described Republican questioning of witnesses in the House’s public impeachment hearings against Trump over the Ukraine scandal as “pathetic .”