Harry Reid: Trump Must Rescind Steve Bannon’s Appointment

Outgoing U.S. senator Harry Reid called for president-elect Donald Trump to rescind his appointment of Stephen K. Bannon (aka “Steve Bannon” to those who want to maximize their SEO) as White House Chief Strategist on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon.

Reid said:

President-elect Trump must act immediately to make Americans like that seventh-grade girl feel that they are welcome in his America. Healing the wounds he inflicted will take more than words. talk is cheap and tweets are cheaper. Healing wounds is going to take action, but so far, Mr. President, rather than healing these wounds, Trump’s actions have deepened them.

In one of his very first if not his first official act, he appointed a man seen as a champion of white supremacy as the number-one strategist in the White House — number one, everybody else under him. According to CNN, and I quote — “white nationalist leaders are praising Trump’s decision to name Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist.” In the same article, they say they see Bannon “as an advocate for policies they favor.”

According to [Southern] Poverty Law Center, Bannon “was the main driver between [sic] Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill.” When asked to comment on Bannon’s hiring, KKK leader David Duke told CNN, “I think that’s excellent.” Court filings stated that Bannon said “that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be whiny brats, and that he didn’t want his girls to go to school with Jews.” That’s a court document.

By placing a champion of white supremacists a step away from the Oval Office, what message does Trump send to the young girl who woke up Wednesday morning in Rhode Island afraid to be a woman of color in America? It’s not a message of healing. If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon.

Rescind it. Don’t do it. Think about this. Don’t do it.

As long as a champion of racial division is a step away from the Oval Office, it would be impossible to take Trump’s efforts to heal the nation seriously. So I say to Donald Trump: take responsibility. Rise to the dignity of the office of the President of the United States. Instead of hiding behind your Twitter account, and show America that racism, bullying, and bigotry have no place in the White House or in America.

Sen. John Cornyn spoke on the Senate floor after Reid and accused the Democrat of being a sore loser. “We used to call people like that ‘sore losers,'” he said. “But frankly, what he does is also contribute to the coarsening of our discourse and debate here in the United States Senate.”