Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele complained last week that Donald Trump’s critics are being “a little bit disingenuous” in condemning the comments he made in 2005 boasting about being able to sexually assault women when the series “50 Shades of Grey” was so popular.
EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo, interviewing Steele on Thursday, played a clip of First Lady Michelle Obama’s recent speech eviscerating Trump for the comments. “My problem with it,” Arroyo said, “isn’t that people shouldn’t be shocked or appalled by the comments; they should and they are. However, we are in a culture and, not to disparage the first lady, but the first lady’s in the front row of the Beyoncé concerts when she’s, you know, doing what she does. I don’t have to paint the picture, you’ve seen the Super Bowl. We’ve got a country that’s bought 50 million copies of ‘50 Shades of Grey’. They don’t exactly refer to women as treasured commodities or something to be revered there.”
“That’s the part of this that I find a little bit disingenuous,” Steele responded, “because they talk about Mr. Trump in the context of objectifying women, and yet everything in our culture does exactly that in so many different ways. So, I get it, the stuff that you like that objectifies women is okay—‘50 Shades of Grey’—but when he says, you know, does locker room talk in a private conversation with someone [that they] just happen to be mic’d up for, then you have moral outrage. And I think that’s where a lot of people, particularly a lot of Trump supporters, are sitting there scratching their head, going, ‘What?’”
“Well, moral outrage is good, as long as it applies to everybody,” Arroyo said.
“Exactly,” Steele responded.
