Steele blasts Trump's return to White House as opening 'Pandora's box of hell'

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Michael Steele compared President-elect Trump’s return to the White House to opening “Pandora’s box of hell” on Tuesday.

“He can’t be an American president. He has to be a Putin president. He has to be an Orbán president. And that’s not what America’s about. So, we have to decide as a country if this is really what it’s — how it ends,” Steele told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House.”

“Yes, I said ‘ends,’” he continued. “Because it doesn’t get better, when you open up this Pandora’s box of hell and expect people’s — to sort of realize an American dream that is slowly being ripped away from them because Donald Trump has decided, ‘Well, we don’t like your last name and you shouldn’t be here.’”

Trump’s election victory and impending return to the White House has rattled Trump critics and Democrats, who also lost their Senate majority earlier month. Many left-leaning leaders are encouraging their supporters to prepare themselves for a second Trump administration.

In the wake of Trump’s election win, prominent Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) said she was “not here to sugarcoat what we all are about to collectively experience” on an Instagram livestream.

“The reality is being set up for us,” Steele said in his MSNBC appearance. “People need to accept what it is and figure out if [you’re going to] bend over and let it happen, or [you’re] in some way [going to] stand up and say, ‘You know what? This is not what we want because this is not who we are.’”

The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.