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
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
