Why you should care about Trump’s new campaign executive
It’s headline news
Here’s one thing they don’t teach you in school about being the Deputy Communications Director for the Democratic Party: You have to read a lot of garbage on the Internet, because you have to know what you’re up against. I’ve been reading the far-right website Breitbart News for years now — it’s like the loonies in the comments section on right-wing blogs sprung up and started writing the articles!
And after years of reading Breitbart headlines like this:
I was both surprised and not at all surprised to hear that Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, is taking over as “chief executive” of the Trump campaign.
It just fits so beautifully! A conspiracy theorist whose writers have stoked fear and violence through hateful words on the Internet is now going to lead a campaign to elect a conspiracy theorist who is infamous for stoking fear and violence through hateful words on and off the Internet. It’s truly a match made in heaven.
In the world of Trump’s new campaign head, this is a pressing question the world needs to consider:
Bannon also apparently believes that made-up statistics are best served with a side of anti-LGBT slurs:
And just in case you thought Trump would never hire someone who oversaw an organization that belittled low-income Americans and hated on immigrants, here’s a headline from Breitbart.com to prove you wrong:
Now, cast your mind back to 2008 — remember when a supporter told the Republican nominee that Obama was an Arab, and the Republican nominee corrected her?
Well, the current Republican nominee was literally the public face of the birther attack on President Obama — an ugly, racist campaign to delegitimize the President. And guess who was there to pour fuel on the fire? You got it — Breitbart.
It’s as though Bannon read the poem on the Statue of Liberty — Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free — and assumed the next line said, “and denigrate them mercilessly.”
Because Catholics
And Jews
And Muslims
Are all targets of ridicule and divisive attacks on Breitbart’s website.
Trump has said you have to treat women “like shit.” With headlines like these, it’s pretty clear that Breitbart has bought into that strategy:
It’s easy to ignore this, or laugh it off. These headlines are unbelievably ridiculous, and it can be hard to take them seriously. But Trump’s candidacy is no laughing matter — he’s a real danger. The hiring decision Trump just made is not something we can laugh at or ignore. Trump has hired a man who ran a garbage website to bring his hate and vitriol to the presidential campaign trail.
Choosing Stephen Bannon — an unabashed extremist who has been fanning the flames of the most outrageous conspiracies from the darkest corners of the internet — to lead his campaign shows you where Trump’s priorities lie. And all it takes is a cursory glance at Bannon’s Breitbart to see a future that we must avoid.
You can bet all of the folks who regularly read Breitbart think Trump should be president. Want to help make sure that doesn’t happen? Make sure you’re registered to vote this fall.
Eric Walker is the Deputy Communications Director at the Democratic National Committee.
