MS NOW host Michael Steele on Tuesday called out Donald Trump over his “simplistic stupidity” after the president entertained the idea of declaring a national emergency in the upcoming midterm elections.

Steele and other panelists on “Weeknight” had just watched a clip of Real America’s Voice host Wayne Allyn Root telling Trump that he has the “right” to take over elections if the Senate can’t pass his SAVE America Act, which would require Americans to prove their citizenship and show photo ID to vote.

“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump replied. “I’ll leave it at that.”

The former chair of the Republican National Committee, jumped right in to discuss the comment.

“What you just heard there was simplistic stupidity, OK?” Steele said. “It was telling the president of the United States something that is just constitutionally and factually incorrect.”

Steele continued, noting that when a president is engaging in such “stupidity” with someone who doesn’t understand how stupid it is “and the best answer they can give you is, ‘Well, stranger things have happened,’ you know you’re on a roller coaster to election hell.”

Trump is currently facing dire approval ratings, in part due to his war on Iran and handling of the U.S. economy. He has continued to baselessly claim the 2020 election was stolen from him — and repeatedly floated running for a third, unconstitutional term.

Steele said Trump rigging future elections is a “reality that’s been set up” since 2024.

“We started this conversation at the beginning of this term, warning people that the end game was to get to a point where Donald Trump could somehow engage in invoking the Insurrection Act, declaring a national emergency,” he recalled Tuesday.

Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act earlier this year to allow himself to deploy U.S. military troops for domestic law enforcement. Steele warned the act could allow the MAGA leader to control the voting process and have it be “redesigned however he wants.”

Trump has notably boosted numerous election deniers and installed loyalists in key positions in the Department of Justice, tried to unilaterally change state and local election laws, insisted on unprecedented voter data access, and threatened election officials.

The president is also trying to restrict mail-in voting — despite using the method himself.

Watch the full “Weeknight” segment on MS NOW’s YouTube account.

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