Many in the national press decided this week that Donald Trump’s decision to name Stephen Bannon as his top strategic adviser is definitive proof that the Trump administration will use bigotry, sexism and racism as tools of the government, more than two months before Trump is sworn in.
Bannon, the former chairman of the provocative Breitbart News website, is viewed by most mainstream news outlets as a dangerous extremist because of the headlines and stories that have appeared on his site. Major media organizations anticipated that Bannon, as an adviser to Trump, will inject a wave of intolerance to the federal government.
Referring to Bannon’s appointment, the New York Times editorial board said Tuesday that “anyone holding out hope that Donald Trump would govern as a uniter — that the racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and nativism of his campaign were just poses to pick up votes — should think again.”
The Washington Post’s editorial board similarly said, “Greater strength … will be needed to resist the forces of intolerance whose representatives are now moving into the White House.”
Those same sentiments were put forward in a House Democratic letter on Tuesday, which outlined some of the items found in Breitbart.
“Under Mr. Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart has referred to a leading Republican who opposed your election as a ‘renegade Jew,’ suggested ‘young Muslims in the West are a ticking time bomb,’ declared that the ‘Confederate flag proclaims a glorious heritage’ and praised the alt-right as a ‘smarter’ version of ‘old-school racist skinheads,'” those Democrats wrote.
Bannon is a former Wall Street banker and entertainment industry deal-maker who joined the Trump campaign after the businessman had won the Republican nomination. He oversaw Breitbart News, an aggressive conservative grassroots website that delights in publishing incendiary and provocative political commentary, though he formally stepped aside after joining the Trump campaign.
One of Breitbart’s most notorious headlines, now regularly cited by Bannon’s media critics, ran in May and referred to conservative pundit Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew.”
But the piece was authored by conservative activist David Horowitz, who is also Jewish, and it criticized Kristol for not supporting Trump.
Breitbart has also been heavily tilted against what it refers to as the “Republican establishment” in Washington, which includes House Speaker Paul Ryan.
In 2014, Bannon said he wants to “destroy all of today’s establishment,” a recurring theme in his public comments about the federal government, bureacracy and Democratic liberalism.
An article at the liberal Mother Jones in August quoted Bannon as having described Breitbart as “the platform for the alt-right,” a movement often accused of promoting causes sympathetic to white supremacists, though there is no set definition among its followers as to what it stands for.
In an interview with the Times published Monday, though, Bannon rejected accusations of bigotry and said his political beliefs are defined by an opposition to globalization and softening of national borders.
But the press sees it differently, and has even been attacking key Democrats, including President Obama, for not doing enough to attack Bannon. Liberal columnist Dana Milbank hit President Obama for not using a press conference on Monday to criticize Bannon, who Milbank described as “a man who has boasted of his ties to the racist ‘alt-right.'”
USA Today has said the Bannon appointment is “salt in the wound for the African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Jews and other Americans who were Trump’s campaign punching bags …”
The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, who has long been a Trump critic, faulted Republican leadership, which he said “won’t call Mr. Bannon out.”
It’s unclear exactly how Bannon will shape Trump’s White House. His title, “chief White House strategist and senior counselor,” is vague.
But when his appointment was announced, Trump’s transition office said he would be “equal partners” with Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, who will serve as Trump’s chief of staff.
