A Moment Of Clarity: The Secret GOP Panic Before Trump Takes the Podium
The Michael Steele Podcast
Two Squared Media
4.8 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the Republican party heading for a "combo meal" of its worst electoral defeats? Before the President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele is sounding the alarm on the nervous energy vibrating through the halls of Congress. While the headlines focus on the spectacle, the real story is the internal fracture between those who have doubled down on the current path and the candidates who are wondering, "How the hell am I going to run a race with this?"
Catch Michael Steele on The Weeknight Mondays - Fridays at 7pm EST on MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/weeknight
Follow Michael on X: https://x.com/MichaelSteele
Follow Michael on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/michaelsteele.bsky.social
Follow Michael on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chairman_steele/
Follow Michael on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@chairman_steele
Listen to The Michael Steele Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-steele-podcast/id1412905534
Watch The Michael Steele Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJNKzTkCZE9uNqPiKYw5eU5YkS_mMsr6o
If you enjoyed this, share it with a friend!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | And now for a moment of clarity. |
| 0:06.2 | He raised some of the questions, and I think this is an interesting discussion about what |
| 0:10.9 | Democrats should be doing in the chamber and actually also for people who are watching, |
| 0:15.6 | who are running for office. You've run the R&C before. |
| 0:19.6 | How should they be watching this speech? And what do you think |
| 0:22.7 | they should try to pull from what could be a lengthy rambling at times banana's speech? |
| 0:28.9 | Well, first off, they should probably have a very, very tall drink with them as they're watching |
| 0:34.8 | of coffee. Can't do that. Can't do that. Coffee. |
| 0:38.5 | Very tall drink of coffee with you before you go into the chamber, since they can't do that. |
| 0:47.3 | But no, I think people, look, there are two types of folks that are going to be in the crosshairs here, particularly on my side of the aisle. |
| 0:55.8 | There are the folks who are in the room who have the office, who have the title of the position, |
| 1:00.3 | who have given countenance to all of this. They put their personal imprimatur on everything |
| 1:06.6 | that's happened since January of last year. |
| 1:18.2 | And so now they are coming to a moment where they have to confront real time what they've wrought. |
| 1:25.0 | Then there are the people sitting outside the chamber who can have that tall drink with them, |
| 1:30.1 | who are sitting there calculating very much to Chris's earlier point, what the hell am I going to do with this? How the hell am I going to run a race when this |
| 1:37.4 | guy is putting kids in jail using them as bait when he's out here saying all these things. |
| 1:43.3 | You look at the map of this country. |
| 1:46.1 | Yes, you can see a lot of red on top, but the veins coursing right through it now are blue. |
| 1:52.2 | How do we know that? Because Republicans have lost every race they've been in since Donald Trump has gotten back into office. |
| 1:59.8 | And if I'm a county chairman, which I was, if I'm a state chairman, which I was, and certainly |
| 2:05.5 | if I'm the national chairman looking at this landscape, I'm looking at a combo meal of 2006 |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Two Squared Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Two Squared Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

