Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz smirks from the stage at a 2019 event hosted by conservative group Turning Point USA.
Steele's comments came during on MSNBC's The Katie Phang Show as he weighed in on violent and divisive rhetoric Cruz and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon spewed from the stage at last weekend's conservative CPAC conference in Texas.
During his speech, Cruz urged the right-wing crowd to "go fight the barbarians," while Bannon declared conservatives were in a "political and ideological war" with those who disagree with their beliefs.
"It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians,” Cruz blustered, according to a Rolling Stone report. “As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”
Steele, who served as RNC chairman from 2009 to 2011, blasted Cruz and Bannon for using extremist language urging Americans to turn against each other.
"It is more fascism than farce," Steele said. "It is more concern than conservatism and it really is about how we as a citizen respond to this. How we push back against it. We are not opponents of each other, we disagree from time-to-time on big and small issues, but our first inclination as Americans is not to go and beat the crap out of the neighbor just because they have a yard sign that we don't like."
Steele then turned his sights specifically on Cruz, arguing that Texas' junior senator has been so focused on partisan chest beating that he hasn't done jack shit for his constituents.
"Just sit the hell down, please. Stop it," Steele went on. "You're not serving the people of Texas, you haven't done that since you have been there, the reality of it is. But you find the grift, you find the hot rhetoric, you make yourself seem like you are the big man on campus and you get things done. But that is not what this is about, this is not about getting things done."
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