The silence of the sheepish
Tom Brown sent me the following:
President-elect Donald Trump is drawing praise from the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white nationalist groups for appointing former Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist.
“Perhaps The Donald is for real,” Rocky Suhayda, chairman of the American Nazi Party, told CNN in an segment that included interviews with several white nationalists.
. . .
Bannon told Mother Jones over the summer that his conservative news outlet was “the platform of the alt-right,” a far-right ideology that promotes white supremacy.
Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart ran headlines such as: “Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,” “Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield,” and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”
So where’s the outrage?
With Dems and blacks:
Top Democrats – including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada – and anti-discrimination groups are ripping the president-elect for the choice.
Pelosi said the hire undermines attempts to unite the country.
“There must be no sugarcoating the reality that a white nationalist has been named chief strategist for the Trump Administration,” she said.
And the Southern Poverty Law Center released a statement Monday saying Bannon’s appointment goes “directly against Trump’s pledge to be a president to ‘all Americans.'”
What a bunch of killjoys! Seriously, after reading that I was hoping for some similar outrage from the GOP. Instead here’s what The Hill reported:
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) got into an uncomfortable back-and-forth with reporters Monday, when they read him a series of racist and misogynistic Breitbart headlines from Bannon’s time at the helm.
“The president has a right to select who he thinks is best to be able to move through,” McCarthy said.
The President absolutely has a right to pick whoever he chooses. And Republicans have a 1st amendment right to criticize objectionable choices. I can recall previous cases of presidential appointees who received a great deal of criticism, even by their own party.
This is exactly what I was getting at in my recent libertarian column. There are so many people on the right who are tone deaf about racism. We shouldn’t adopt the over-the-top political correctness that you see on campuses, but what’s wrong with insisting that top White House officials are not self described alt-righters? Is that too much to ask?
PS. In a way it’s weird for me to be doing these posts. Most of the time I think the press is too sensitive about race, too eager to cry racism. But now when it’s right in front of our eyes, lots of people on the right still can’t see it. Or maybe they are like sheep, afraid of angering the big bad Donald Trump.
PPS. I really hope Trump stops doing these things; I’m getting sick of talking about him. And on economic policy the early signs are actually pretty positive.
PPPS. Speaking of farm animals, how about those three cows!
PPPPS. File this under “I hope he’s a quick learner“:
A source told NBC News that Trump asked President Barack Obama during their Thursday meeting how many White House staffers he could replace. And when the sitting president responded that Trump gets to staff just about the entire White House, the president-elect was surprised, NBC’s source said.
The Wall Street Journal reported a similar anecdote, but said that it was Trump aides who seemed “unaware” that the West Wing staff needed to be replaced after Obama’s departure.