Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele joins anti-Trump Lincoln Project

(Image credit: Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images)

published 25 August 2020

Michael Steele once served as chairman of the Republican National Committee, and now, he's committed to ensuring that the party's presidential nominee doesn't win in November.

Steele announced on Monday that he has joined the Lincoln Project, an organization founded by conservatives that aims to keep President Trump from being re-elected in November. Steele told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that "today is the day where things should matter and you need to take stock of what matters to you — and the kind of leader you want to lead in these moments. And for me, it ain't him." 

Steele, the first Black chairman of the RNC, left the position in 2011, and said while he understands his role as "a former party leader," he is "still an American, and these things matter to me more than aligning myself with a party that has clearly decided it would rather be sycophantic than principled." Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, told CNN in a statement that Steele's decision to join the group's "efforts to oust Trump and his enablers is a big deal. It's truly 'country over party' personified."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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