(VIDEO) MICHAEL STEELE 2011: REV. WRIGHT CONTROVERSY WAS 'SILLY'; MICHAEL STEELE 2008: 'THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING'

To say that the exchange Al Sharpton and Michael Steele had yesterday was heated may not be doing a service to the word heated. We can only imagine how everything would have went down if they were actually in the same studio with each other! It all reolved around Steele not denouncing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s vitriol since he joined the race for President, and they along with Democratic Strategist Bob Shrum turned the discussion into a flat out verbral brawl. But that’s not the story we are focused on here. It seems that Steele told a little whopper. As you will see in the video that’s provided, at one point Sharpton speaks of how Obama had to denounce his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, over Wright’s past comments, but Steele is not demanding that Perry walk back the things he had been saying. Steele responds by saying that at the time of the Rev. Wright controversy, he had said that it was a “silly” campaign to get involved with. Well, Google is your friend, but we are not too sure Steele would think so after what we found.

One People’s Project

Former Republican Party Chairman and MSNBC contributor Michael Steele was being less than honest during a heated conversation with Rev. Al Sharpton on his MSNBC program when he said that he denonced the 2008 attacks on then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama related to his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It was part of a debate over how Texas Gov. Rick Perry wasn’t being held accountable for the venomous rhetoric he has been directing towards President Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke since he joined the race for the White House on Saturday.

Perry’s recent remarks at the Iowa State Fair has generated some heat in the days that followed. There, he said Ben Bernanke would be committing a “treasonous” act if he decided to “print more money to boost the economy,“ and that “we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas” if he did. He has also called President Obama’s patriotism into question saying, “I think you want a president who is passionate about America — that’s in love with America,” and his lack of military service being a barrier to being an effective leader.  On Tuesday, Steele appeared on Sharpton’s program along with Democratic strategist Bob Schrum to discuss those comments, with Sharpton starting off the discussion by asking whether Perry had “crossed the line”.  Steele immediately dismissed the notion as “part of the dog days of summer” and “a little bit disingenuous” on the part of those on the left to be offended. That began an almost ten-minute shoutfest where Sharpton and Shrum accused Steele in not being as forthcoming in denouncing Steele as other in the Republican Party have like former Bush adviser Karl Rove, and Steele saying that Rove’s denouncement is part of “a political pissing match” with Perry, part of a longstanding feud between the Bush and Perry camps. Things became so heated that at one point, Steele said to Shrum and Sharpton, “There’s nothing enlightening about any of this discussion!”

But no one backed down. “When the President ran, we had to deal with everything, not only what he said, (but) what the pastor of the church he used to go to said,” Sharpton said refering to the controversy surrounding past remarks made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church in Chicago, where Obama was a member. “We had to deal with anybody who ever went to his house said. But now all of a sudden this is silliness. This is a joke when we are talking about not what somebody affiliated with Gov. Perry said, but what Gov. Perry said. They call that a double standard, Mr. Steele.”
But Steele responded that there is no double standard on his part. “Excuse me Revrend, you clearly don’t know what I said about that at that time,” he said. “I thought that conversation was silly. So I’m at least being consistant in terms of how and what I view to be relevant to the body politic and what..”

“But it wasn’t silly, it was sinister,” Shrum interrupted, to which Steele said, “Well that’s your characterization. My characterization was that it was silly.”

On April 29, 2008, when he was a Fox News contributor, however, Steele, in talking about Rev. Wright’s speaking tour at the time, and particularly about then recent-comments made by the embattled pastor, actually characterized the controversy surrounding him as something much more than silly:

“I think (Rev. Wright remarks broadcast earlier) made the case — I think he made a very clear case about the theology that he espouses and the theology that I believe Barack Obama ascribes to to some degree. And I think, he, at one point, said that he talked about how God and man and government are interrelated and how – you know, you take this idea of creating a God who acts and behaves a certain way, people follow that and they shape their governments around it.
And I say, that’s the point. We want to know, does this philosophy trickle down to the government level so that we see it manifests in public policy? That’s the essence of this controversy around Reverend Wright and Barack Obama.
So, I think he was very clear and I think he was very demonstrable in that regard, and in terms of, you know, getting this off the front pages or out of the news, this is the gift that’s going to keep on giving for some time to come.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy