Sanders: Breitbart exec in White House should make people ‘nervous’
.@BernieSanders: Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon to White House position "should get us very nervous" https://t.co/LMMoJYaQT1
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) November 14, 2016
Bernie Sanders warned that President-elect Donald Trump’s recent appointment of a former Breitbart News executive should “get us very nervous.”
Sanders criticized Trump’s decision to elevate Steve Bannon to his White House chief strategist; Trump also tapped Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff Sunday.
{mosads}”Mr. Priebus is a conservative, well experienced former chair of the Republican Party. I think the other appointment should get us very nervous,” Sanders said.
The independent Vermont senator, a rising star in the Democratic Party since his failed presidential bid, highlighted America’s centuries-long struggle with “discrimination, racism, sexism and homophobia.”
“Hopefully, we have made some progress in making this country a less discriminatory society. I will be damned if we are going to go backwards and start dividing this country up again,” Sanders said.
“We are bringing our people together, we are not going back. We’re going to tell Mr. Bannon and any other advisers, we aren’t going to be turning on each other, we are going to be standing together in the wealthiest country in the history of the world to fight for a society and a government that works for all of us.”
A handful of Democrats and civil rights groups have called on Trump to cut ties to Bannon, citing some of Breitbart’s news coverage, like referring to conservative commentator Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew” in a headline this year and publishing stories that criticize groups like Muslims and feminists.
Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have denounced the hiring.
But Trump allies like Priebus and House Speaker Paul Ryan have sought to tamp down those concerns that Bannon is racist or anti-Semitic.
“That’s not the Steve Bannon I know and I’ve spent a lot of time with him,” Priebus said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “He was a force for good on the campaign at every level.”
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