The Democratic Party resorted to smears against top White House staff Thursday as part of the left’s unhinged reaction to recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, — throwing out serious and unsubstantiated accusations at Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Stephen Miller, and even Breitbart News.

“Tell Trump to fire Steve Bannon, Seb Gorka, Stephen Miller, and every white supremacist in his administration,” the email reads, linking to a signup page.

The email comes amid a broader meltdown from the left in the wake of protests by white nationalists Saturday — protests which were met by “Antifa” counter-protesters. Trump has come under fire for not condemning the “Unite the Right” protesters as strongly as some Democrats would like, and for also refusing to leave the counter-protesters out of his condemnations.

Now, as the Democrats seek to pounce on the controversy, they have resorted to calls for sackings, backed up only with name-calling and falsehood. The email, sent to supporters, does not make any arguments or seek to persuade — instead presenting a picture of each target with an attached smear.

The email calls White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon the “Creator of a White Nationalist Platform.” Presumably, this refers to Breitbart News — of which Bannon was executive chairman before joining the Trump campaign. However, Breitbart News is not a white nationalist platform — but is often referred to as such by people who have not read the website.

Bannon has repeatedly denied being a white supremacist, and in an interview with The American Prospect published Wednesday called the far right “a collection of clowns.”
“Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know…help crush it more,” he said.

“I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in November. That same month he told the Wall Street Journal: “I’ve never been a supporter of ethno-nationalism.”

The Democratic Party email also targets Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka, calling him a “member of a Hungarian Nazi organization” — apparently referring to one of a number of debunked smears about Gorka’s past associations.

Finally, it refers to policy adviser Stephen Miller as a “devotee of white nationalist leader Richard Spencer.” As left-wing Politifact has even noted, while Spencer has claimed Miller as a mentee, Miller has vigorously denied such claims.

“I have absolutely no relationship with Mr. Spencer. I completely repudiate his views, and his claims are 100 percent false,” Miller said.

The lack of substance or evidence to the claims does not prevent the Democrats from concluding: “Trump must fire the white supremacists that work for him.”

In 2016, Michelle Obama told a cheering Democratic National Convention: “When they go low, we go high.” The Democratic Party in 2017 appears to have taken a different path.

Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter:  @AdamShawNY