CNN political commentator Angela Rye said that she agrees with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon that the Trump White House has a poor track record on hiring minorities and should make more of an effort to do so.
Rye, the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, is no fan of President Donald Trump. But she clearly sees through the false narrative that Bannon is a racist. On Thursday night, she told Anderson Cooper that she agrees with Bannon on the need for White House diversity:
The narrative that Bannon is a white supremacist has become a staple of liberal cable-news talking points, despite no evidence that Bannon is racist in any way. Bannon did once say in an interview that his website Breitbart News is a platform for the “Alt-Right.” But as people close to him make clear, Bannon at the time thought that “Alt-Right” referred to a community of alternative conservatives on the Internet. Only later did the term “Alt-Right” attain a racial connotation in the mainstream media.
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Bannon’s populism places special emphasis on advancement for African-Americans, as listeners of his radio show “Breitbart News Daily” have known for years. Populist nationalists believe that black Americans have been disenfranchised by elites in both political parties, and that educational and small business opportunities need to surface in the black community against the wishes of Democrats who seek to sell welfare for votes and Republicans who largely don’t pay any attention to black people. Bannon’s company Breitbart News is considerably more diverse than the White House.
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