House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday that President Trump should fire top advisor Steve Bannon following Trump’s widely criticized denouncement of the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday.
Pelosi said Trump’s initial statement, in which he did not call out white nationalists specifically for inciting the unrest, “was a direct reflection of the fact that his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is an alt-right white supremacist sympathizer and a shameless enforcer of those un-American beliefs.”
Trump gave a second White House statement on Monday that condemned “the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups.”
Pelosi, D-Calif., called Trump’s latest statement, “long overdue,” and said if he is sincere “about rejecting white supremacists, he should remove all doubt by firing Steve Bannon and the other alt-right white supremacist sympathizers in the White House.”
She said Trump “has sheltered and encouraged the forces of bigotry and discrimination” since taking office, and his two-day delay in condemning white nationalists is evidence of his poor treatment of minorities.
