Rep. Elijah Cummings Calls Steve Bannon A ‘White Supremacist Type’
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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 solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
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