Reince Priebus, the newly appointed Trump chief of staff joined MSNBC's Morning Joe and tried to normalize Breitbart's CEO Steve Bannon from the alt-Right, anti-Semitic person he's been and said, "I've only seen a generous, hospitable, wise person to work with."
There is major concern over Bannon's appointment in the White House and with good cause.
Scarborough began the interview by asking, "There are some concerns about Steve Bannon because of the Breitbart connections. What would you say to those people that have those concerns right now?"
Priebus replied, "That's not the Steve Bannon that I know and I've spent a lot of time with him. And here's a guy who's a Harvard Business School, London School of Economics, 10-year Naval officer advising admirals. He was a force for good on the campaign at every level that I saw, all the time."
See, Reince only saw him acting like a swell guy, so he's not really a racist pig.
Walter Isaacson followed up and said, "...even if he did go to Harvard Business School of whatever, sends a signal that some of the stoked up hatred that happened in the fringe parts of the Internet are things that he's bringing into the White House? Am I wrong about that and how do you make -- how do you reassure people that's not the case?"
Once again the only case Priebus can make for Bannon is an observation.
He said, "I think everyone out there can agree that you judge people as you see them, not as other people have said. But -- and that's the -- that's what I would say, is that it's what people do, it's how people act on a day-to-day basis, and that's nothing I've ever seen. I've only seen a generous, hospitable, wise person to work with."
Nobody cares about what you've seen while hanging out with Bannon. We've seen Breitbart with our own two eyes and it's been a cesspool of extremist right wing xenophobia, white nationalism, anti-feminism and the like.
We are all so happy that Priebus has only seen a generous guy while working with him. It's meaningless.
The Anti-Defamation League condemned Bannon’s selection, saying he presided over a “group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists.”
Bannon’s Breitbart News especially has come under fire for its rampant anti-Semitism. In May, contributor David Horowitz wrote a piece calling The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol a “renegade Jew.” In September, Breitbart News writer Matthew Tyrmand called Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum a “political revisionist” who was “on the warpath against the rising populist forces doing electoral damage to her establishment friends and allies across the world,” adding, “hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned.”
In August, former Breitbart News writer Ben Shapiro accused the website of embracing “a movement shot through with racism and anti-Semitism.” Bannon’s anti-Semitism goes deeper than just Breitbart. As CNN’s Jake Tapper noted on Twitter after today’s announcement, Bannon’s ex-wife swore in court that “he said he doesn’t like Jews” and didn’t want his children to go to school with Jews. Indeed, Esquire politics contributor Charles Pierce even compared Bannon with David Duke
Priebus thinks America should forget all about Bannon's history of extremism and racism and instead believe his own brief encounters with Bannon.
Good luck with that.
