Rep. Elijah Cummings Calls Steve Bannon A ‘White Supremacist Type’
Image by Getty Images
Speaking on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings said that the slain civil rights leader would be dismayed to see a “white supremacist-type person” like Steve Bannon in the White House.
The black Democrat said that King would have been proud to see former President Barack Obama elected president. “But at the same time,” he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “when we see a guy like Bannon, who is, as far as I’m concerned, a white supremacist-type person, sitting in the White House — sitting in the White House — and I’m paying his salary, I think he would be very disappointed.”
Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, has been linked to white supremacist and white nationalist movements thanks to his role as the former head of Breitbart News, which he once boasted was a “platform for the alt-right.” Recent news reports have also revealed that Bannon reads and admires far-right and fascist thinkers from Europe, including France’s Charles Maurras and Italy’s Julius Evola.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 by white supremacist James Earl Ray, while on a visit to Memphis, Tennessee, where he went to stand with striking sanitation workers.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
