MSNBC host Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, is tearing into President Donald Trump for sharing a fake video Sunday showing former President Barack Obama getting arrested in the Oval Office and languishing in prison.
“We should note Donald Trump is the one with the mugshot, and the only president to have been convicted on 34 felony counts,” Steele said during his opening monologue on “The Weeknight” Monday. “You see, [to] Donald Trump, facts like that don’t matter.”
Trump reshared the video on his Truth Social platform mere days after Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, issued a report accusing the Obama White House of “treasonous conspiracy” by stating Russia helped Trump win the 2016 election.
Gabbard’s claims clashed with the findings of former U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a bipartisan 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report, however, which stated “Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump.”
Her report and the fake video featuring Obama were released amid an increasing focus on Trump’s ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019.
The video, which appears to have been generated by artificial intelligence, accrued more than 30,000 likes and 11,000 “retruths” after Trump shared it on his platform. Steele argued Monday that Trump posts “this nonsense” knowing his base will “eat it up.”
The majority of right-wing broadcasters have continued to express support for Trump despite his administration teasing to declassify files on Epstein and his rumored “client list,” and then baselessly accusing Democrats of making the documents up.
“All of those unfounded conspiracies,” Steele said. “Trump can’t just turn off the spigot of lies when he wants to. And when it comes to Epstein, a significant portion of his voters expect Trump to deliver, even when the facts are not on their side.”
Steele called the Obama video another one of “Trump’s dangerous attempts to distract his base from the Epstein fallout.” Still, his co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend argued that it’s only disguised as content and serves as “incitement” for Trump’s base, instead.
She reminded Steele that Trump pardoned some 1,500 people convicted of anything related to events at or near the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and now “seems to be putting out a clarion call to his own little personal militia” to do his bidding.
“And now the people we have at the administration and Trump saying, ‘These people need to be arrested. Sedition. Traitors,’” added Will Sommer, senior reporter at The Bulwark. “I mean, it’s not hard to imagine that this could incite violence.”
Sanders-Townsend noted that it arguably already has, as Jan. 6 defendant Taylor Taranto was arrested near Obama’s home in 2023 with guns in his car after Trump posted a screenshot including Obama’s address on social media.
She said, “I think that Donald Trump shares these things, and it’s like a bat signal to his supporters.”
Watch the full discussion below: