Decent Americans should read with disgust the news that disgraced former White House aide Steve Bannon appears to be squirming back into President Trump’s good graces.
At a time when Trump’s continuing games of footsie with racially charged people and memes have been roiling national news for weeks, the last thing this country needs is for its president to re-welcome into his orbit one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the alt-right. Bannon also was guilty of a particularly egregious bit of anti-Mormon demagoguery that smeared the patriotism of former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his family.
In short, Bannon is poison in the body politic.
As a reminder, let’s start with Bannon’s utterly unjustified attack on the Romneys. I was there, about 30 feet away from Bannon, when he spewed his vileness while speaking at a rally for extremely controversial Alabama judge Roy Moore. As if speaking directly to Romney — who had criticized Moore — Bannon said, “You hid behind your religion. You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam. Do not talk to me about honor and integrity. … Judge Roy Moore has more honor and integrity in his little pinkie finger than your entire family has in its whole DNA.”
This was an outrage. It is well-known that the Church of Latter-Day Saints strongly encourages several years of missionary work from its adherents. To suggest that Romney did missionary work as a way to dodge the draft is beyond despicable — especially considering that Bannon helped elect a president who really did use iffy grounds to avoid service in Vietnam, claiming heel spurs while not even being able to later remember which heels were hurt.
As noted above, Bannon also tried to provide a gateway into mainstream politics for the “alt-right,” that collection of haters who often dally with white nationalism and other noxious creeds. When running Breitbart News, Bannon boasted about making it “the platform for the alt right” and nurtured the career of the hideous provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.
It was conservative radio star Dana Loesch, nobody’s idea of a liberal or weak-kneed “RINO,” who after years of working closely with Bannon labeled him “one of the worst people on God’s green earth.”
Bannon should be nowhere near the Oval Office. For Trump even to be talking to him is for Trump to put the lie to any thought that he really does want to calm the political waters. Bannon is all about what he repeatedly described to Yiannopoulos as “#war.” So, apparently, is our president.
