The Guardian

Welcome to politics weekly extra. I'm Jonathan Friedland something of an obsession on this podcast for us has been

What happens now to the Republican party? How do they rebuild regroup? Where do they go next?

It's been a fascination of mine particularly how they got to this point and one aspect of it looms very large

Which is how on earth can this party given what happened to them under Donald Trump ever hope to reach out to those African-American voters

minority voters who

Overwhelmingly

Turned their backs on the Republican party with all that in mind

I was really excited by the prospect of speaking to Michael Steele

former chairman of the Republican National Committee who made a break from team Trump by signing up last autumn

For the Lincoln project which was that group of

Renegade Republicans who were campaigning to make Joe Biden president

Michael Steele is interesting for all those reasons, but he's also interesting because he was the first

African-American chair of the RNC

He's a commentator you see him on MSNBC the kind of mainly liberal networks are that's interesting

He's the brother-in-law of Mike Tyson how about that not that we got into that in our conversation

But there was so much else to talk about a man who grew up in a Democratic family his mother was a Democrat

Became in effect the head of the Republican party only to in some ways have his heart broken by what happened under Donald Trump

So my first question to Michael Steele was how on earth did someone like him become a Republican?

Well, it's you know, it's like any journey. You just kind of started and you don't know where it's going to end up

I mean I became a Republican at 17 years old growing up in Washington DC

Which again was not some conservative bastion it was very much a town royal by

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