Michael Steele on Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘Just shut the hell up’

(The Hill) – Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Michael Steele unloaded on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday, saying that the controversial firebrand congresswoman needs to “just shut the hell up.”

In an interview on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour,” Steele rebuked Greene for calling for a “national divorce” that would separate the country into red states and blue states. He said that Greene had become a humiliating weight on the GOP who needs to rethink her position. 

“She has no clue what the hell she’s talking about,” Steele said. “Why do we listen to this crazy fool? Marjorie Taylor Greene, please just shut the hell up. Do us all a favor. You are an embarrassment to the Republican Party and to the country as a congresswoman.”

“We fought that war,” he added. “A Republican president lost his life over trying to save the union, and this fool wants to split it? So, here we go. This is the kind of crazy that requires a lot of heavy thinking, because she isn’t.”

Steele, who helmed the RNC from 2009 until 2011, has been fiercely critical of former President Donald Trump and like-minded politicians, like Greene, for years, and publicly supported President Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

His remarks on Thursday came as Greene continues to push her proposal for a “national divorce,” which, according to Greene, would drastically reduce the size of the federal government, separate states by political ideology and allow them to pursue their own policy agendas free of federal interference. 

While she has insisted that she isn’t calling for “civil war,” her comments have drawn fierce criticism from both Democrats and many Republicans, who have accused Greene of seeking to further divide the country and encourage secessionism — a sore point for a country that fought a bloody civil war after 11 states sought to leave the union in 1860s.