New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has joined the chorus of voices blasting President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Breitbart founder Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counselor.
“Bannon won’t build bridges, he will burn them,” Booker said in a statement published on Facebook Tuesday. “He is unfit to advise America’s commander-in-chief. Donald Trump should reverse the decision to hire him and chart a different course for the good of the American people.”
Before joining forces with Trump in August as the CEO of his campaign, Bannon served as the executive chairman of Breitbart News, an ultra conservative website that caters to the so-called alt-right movement with headlines including “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,” “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,” and “World Health Organization Report: Trannies 49 Xs Higher HIV Rate.”
The Anti-Defamation League also blasted the White House appointment, which it regards as “hostile to core American values,” while Seth Meyers told his “Late Night” viewers Monday that Bannon is a “white nationalist and anti-Semite.”
Read Booker’s entire statement below.
“Over the course of his campaign, Donald Trump degraded and demeaned Americans, threatened our rights, and attacked the privileges of citizenship. He will have a disastrous presidency if he governs that way, and he must show the American people with words and action how he will change direction. Many have offered to give him a chance to do so, despite his divisive campaigning, and he should not squander that opportunity to unite our nation.
Elevating Steve Bannon — a man who leads a website that promotes truly radical views about race and religion, whose appointment was celebrated by neo-Nazis and denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, and who has been condemned by Republicans and Democrats alike — to one of the highest positions in the White House installs a man with fringe and dangerous ideologies just steps from the Oval Office.
Bannon won’t build bridges, he will burn them. He is unfit to advise America’s commander-in-chief. Donald Trump should reverse the decision to hire him and chart a different course for the good of the American people.”