Stephen Bannon, the driving force behind the right-wing Breitbart News website, has been chosen by Donald Trump as chief strategist.
The site serves up an agenda that critics accuse of xenophobia, Islamophobia and misogyny. Under Mr Bannon, it has become one of the most-read conservative news and opinion sites in the US and during the election campaign the site unashamedly promoted Donald Trump.
Mr Trump appointed Mr Bannon as campaign CEO in August and, following last week’s election victory, has handed him a key White House role.
“It is easy to see why the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide,” Adam Jentleson, spokesman for top Senate Democrat Harry Reid, said in a statement.
Bannon has also long been a champion of anti-Muslim extremists.
For nearly a year before Trump hired Bannon to run his campaign, Bannon hosted a daily radio show where many of his guests instigated fear and loathing of Muslims in America.
According to research by Mother Jones and the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund, Bannon conducted dozens of interviews on his SiriusXM show, Breitbart News Daily, with leading anti-Muslim extremists. The collective interviews, steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, paint a dark and paranoid picture of America’s 3.3 million Muslims and the world’s second-largest faith.
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A top Trump surrogate warned on Bannon’s show about a future America “where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that’s what’s coming.”
One of Bannon’s guests on the show, the high-profile Trump surrogate Roger Stone, warned of a future America “where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that’s what’s coming.”
Bannon often bookended these interviews with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as “top experts” and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them.
