Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), ridiculed former President Donald Trump on Saturday for his remarks comparing his crowd size to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
During his speech on Thursday, Trump, the GOP presidential candidate, claimed that more people were at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, which preceded the U.S. Capitol riot to King Jr.’s crowd size when he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at Washington’s Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people. If not, we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people,” the former president said. “And I’m okay with it because I liked Dr. Martin Luther King.”
King Jr.’s iconic speech drew an estimated 250,000 people, according to the National Park Service, while the House select committee that investigated January 6 said Trump’s crowd that day was 53,000.
In addition, Trump also claimed during Thursday’s speech that 75 percent of Americans are supporters of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) agenda.
“I think the base is 75 percent of the country, far beyond the Republican Party, because we’re a party of common sense and I’m a person of common sense,” he said.
Joe Raedle and Michael Schwartz/Getty Images
During Saturday’s MSNBC’s The Weekend, Steele, who is a co-host on the program and Trump critic, discussed Trump’s various remarks as he ridiculed the former president, suggesting he’s taking “advantage of the marijuana laws of Florida.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment.
“It is very clear Donald Trump is taking advantage of the marijuana laws of Florida because that brother must be high as hell thinking that, comparing himself to Martin Luther King,” Steele said laughing. “You know what, Donald? The only difference between the real estate in 1963, and the real estate in 2017 is Martin Luther King. That is the biggest difference — you ain’t him.”
He added: “This is the thing that kills me. One of the things that really bothers me about that press conference…is the way the press lets all of that slide and not really push back and go, ‘Really? On what grounds do you think your events and Martin Luther King’s events align the same?’ And it just frustrates me that this guy gets away with a lot of this crazy noise and people are entertained by it, but it’s dangerous entertainment.”
Steele is not the first to sound the alarm over the media coverage of Trump’s speech and the need for fact-checking.
Mary Trump, the former president’s estranged niece who is a vocal critic of her uncle, took to X, formerly Twitter, and her Substack on Friday to share her thoughts on Trump’s press conference and the media coverage of it.
Referencing MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell’s opening monologue on The Last Word on Friday, Mary Trump wrote on X that her uncle’s press conference felt like “2016 all over again.”
“Lawrence O’Donnell is right—yesterday felt like 2016 all over again. And that is not a good thing,” she wrote.
In her Substack, Mary Trump pointed out several reasons why it felt like 2016, including not being able to fact-check Trump’s speech live. She added that, while she and others attempted to fact-check Trump in real time, “it’s impossible to do that verbally because, given the volume and velocity of his lies, it would mean talking over him the whole time, which would make the livestream an incomprehensible mess.”
