[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 165 (Thursday, November 17, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6445-S6446]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BANNON APPOINTMENT

  Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to address the President-
elect's selection of Stephen Bannon, a divisive figure and former head 
of the alt-right Web site Breitbart to serve as Chief Strategist and 
Senior Counsel to the President.
  In the early hours of November 9, after it became clear that he had 
officially won the race for the White House, President-Elect Trump 
appeared before his supporters to deliver a victory speech. He said, 
``Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division. . . . To 
all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this Nation, I 
say it is time for us to come together as one united people.''
  After a long and contentious campaign, it seemed to me that the 
President-elect implicitly acknowledged that some of the rhetoric he 
had used during the race had alienated and offended many of our 
communities. He said, ``I pledge to every citizen of our land that I 
will be the President for all Americans.''
  It is no secret that I did not support President-Elect Trump during 
the campaign, but despite the fact that I disagreed passionately with 
our President-elect about the best way to approach many if not most of 
the challenges facing our Nation, I truly believe that there are places 
where we can find some common ground. We both understand the need to 
rebuild our Nation's crumbling infrastructure and to send Americans 
back to work repairing our roads, bridges, and schools. Both President-
Elect Trump and I support closing the carried interest loophole, which 
allows private equity and hedge fund managers to avoid paying their 
fair share of taxes. These are issues on which I look forward to 
working with the next administration, so one can understand why I was 
encouraged by President-Elect Trump's call for unity. Once an election 
is over and the heat of the campaign has subsided, the American people 
expect our leaders to come together to find common cause and get to 
work solving our Nation's problems.
  I was disappointed when, just a few days later, I learned that the 
President-elect had selected former Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon 
to serve as his Chief Strategist and Senior Counsel, a position the 
President-elect described as an ``equal partner'' to his incoming White 
House Chief of Staff.
  The selection of Mr. Bannon to serve at the very highest level of our 
government does not signal a willingness to set aside our differences 
and embrace unity--far from it. Before Mr. Bannon joined the Trump 
campaign, where he was widely credited as the chief architect of its 
most corrosive tactics, Mr. Bannon was the executive chairman of 
Breitbart News.
  Breitbart News, for those who are not familiar with it, is a 
conservative Web site founded by the late Andrew Breitbart. Even from 
its inception, Breitbart was a bastion of far-right ideology whose 
writers and editorial editors unapologetically courted controversy. But 
the site took a darker turn shortly after Mr. Bannon took it over in 
2012.
  ``I think anger is a good thing,'' Mr. Bannon is quoted as telling a 
gathering of conservative activists, and it shows. Mr. Bannon guided 
Breitbart away from more mainstream conservative opinion to instead 
traffic in an ideology of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and 
anti-Semitism. Even a former Breitbart editor, who has lamented the 
site's hard shift to the extreme right, described its comment section 
as ``turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers.''
  This Senator thinks it is important for the public to understand 
exactly how Mr. Bannon's Breitbart describes its fellow citizens. Here 
are just a few articles that Breitbart published under Mr. Bannon's 
direction.
  ``Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement's Human Shield.'' Included 
in this article is the line, ``Giffords is their human shield--the gun 
control representative who could do and say what she wanted without 
facing any real pressure to prove her claims were true.''
  Two weeks to the day after nine people were murdered at the Emanuel 
AME Church in Charleston, SC, Breitbart published, ``Hoist it High and 
Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage.'' In the 
article, the writer asks: ``Barack, you might just want to remind us 
again which state of the Union, north or south, your ancestors resided 
in during the traumatic years 1861-1865? Or did Kenya not have a dog in 
that fight?''
  In ``Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture,'' the author 
describes cases of sexual assault in Europe, but warns that ``you won't 
hear much about it in U.S. mainstream media because the epidemic is a 
byproduct of the influx into Europe of a million, mostly Muslim, 
migrants.''
  ``Mexico is Sending us Colonists, Not Immigrants'' is a story in 
which readers are warned that ``Mexico sees Mexicans in the United 
States as strategic assets in every sense of that word. They are seen 
as extensions of the Mexican state and partners in Mexico's plan.''
  This is nasty stuff. This is vile. It comes all the way from the top, 
from Mr. Bannon himself. In July, Mr. Bannon wrote a piece for 
Breitbart, in which he accused his political opponents of a ``plot to 
take down America'' by focusing on the need to improve the relationship 
between law enforcement and communities of color. That was the plot to 
take down America.
  The article opened with Mr. Bannon explicitly and baselessly linking 
the man responsible for shooting police officers in Dallas, TX, to the 
Black Lives Matter movement. Mr. Bannon wrote: ``Five police officers 
are murdered in Dallas by a [hashtag] Black Lives Matter-type activist-
turned-sniper.'' There is no question that the Dallas shooter was a 
troubled man who harbored hate in his heart, a man whom investigators 
determined was himself motivated by racist ideologies, but there is no 
evidence suggesting that the shooter was a member of Black Lives 
Matter, a movement born in opposition to violence and hate.

[[Page S6446]]

  He was not an ``activist-turned-sniper,'' a turn of phrase Mr. Bannon 
crafted to suggest that two roles exist along a continuum, to suggest 
that it is only a matter of time before the peaceful protesters take up 
arms.
  It is bad enough that Mr. Bannon sought to fan the flames of fear, 
anxiety, and turn our communities against Americans peacefully 
exercising their first amendment rights. Mr. Bannon's article did not 
stop at impugning activists who protest officer-involved shootings. No. 
Mr. Bannon proceeded to cast suspicion upon an entire race. He wrote:

       Here's a thought: What if the people getting shot by the 
     cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this 
     world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.

  Wild conspiracy theories aside, there is a name for that kind of 
tactic. It is called a dog whistle. To some, such rhetoric may not 
appear overtly racist, and make no mistake, that is by design. Not 
every person who hears that kind of language understands that by saying 
that ``some people are naturally aggressive and violent,'' Mr. Bannon 
is suggesting that Black people--after all the ones who were shot by 
the police--are naturally aggressive and violent.
  But to the alt-right, to those who read his Web site, Mr. Bannon's 
meaning is all too clear. Now, Mr. Bannon does not always attempt to 
cloak his views. At times, connecting lines he draws are much clearer. 
In the very same article, Mr. Bannon suggested that efforts by the 
Obama administration to pursue gun safety measures in the wake of the 
Orlando shooting are nothing more than an effort to divert attention 
away from refugees. Never mind that refugees were not involved in the 
incident. Let's all remember that the tragedy at the Pulse Nightclub in 
Orlando, a shooting in which 49 people were murdered, and 53 others 
were wounded, was carried out by an American-born U.S. citizen.
  Nonetheless, Mr. Bannon wrote: ``In the wake of Orlando, the Obama 
administration, with Hillary Clinton cheering it on, intoned against 
guns and `hate,' and is now back to importing more hating Muslims.''
  To suggest that members of a peaceful protest movement like Black 
Lives Matter were in league with a cold-blooded killer, that the 
sympathies of the President of the United States lie not with the 
victims of gun violence but instead with those who would seek to do us 
harm, to pit members of vulnerable communities against one another--
LGBT people against refugees, peaceful protesters against the cops who 
rushed to shield them from gunfire--is abhorrent.
  Regrettably, we have no reason to believe Mr. Bannon would not seek 
to deploy such tactics from the White House. After all, they featured 
prominently in the Trump campaign's final television ad. In the spot, 
the President-elect's voice warns that ``those who control the levers 
of power in Washington'' and ``global special interests'' don't have 
America's best interests at heart.
  At the same time, images of George Soros, Federal Reserve Chair Janet 
Yellen, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein--all prominent Jews--
flash on the screen. To those who may not know better, such an ad could 
seem innocuous, but, to me, its message is obvious. The ad's anti-
Semitic overtones, which draw on an old and hateful conspiracy theory 
about Jews controlling banks and financial markets, were obvious to me. 
I called it a German shepherd whistle designed to be heard in some of 
the darkest remaining corners of our country and our world. Politics 
that rely on this type of innuendo--Stephen Bannon's brand of 
politics--has no place in a modern Presidential campaign, and it 
certainly has no place in the White House.
  Let's be clear. The use of racially charged rhetoric and innuendo is 
repulsive. The very purpose of deploying dog-whistle politics in the 
context of a campaign is to attract the support of people who harbor 
hateful ideologies without offending the sensibilities of more 
mainstream voters.
  Every Member of this body should condemn rhetoric that sows the seeds 
of discourse. It is our obligation, not just as Senators but as 
Americans, to stand up to Mr. Bannon's hateful, decisive brand of 
politics and reject it. We cannot change the fact that such strategy 
has played a role in this campaign, but moving forward, it is 
imperative that we not allow these corrosive tactics to become 
normalized. We cannot allow them to become a regular part of our 
politics.
  If President-Elect Trump truly meant what he said during his victory 
speech, if he truly hopes to be President for all Americans, he will 
recognize that such tactics stand in the way of that goal and he will 
renounce them. The women and men the leader chooses to surround himself 
with show the public what kind of leader he will be. President-Elect 
Trump has a choice: Will he truly attempt to ``bind the wounds of 
division'' or will our next President seek counsel from a man who 
proudly traffics in hatred, half-truths, and pernicious innuendo? Will 
President-Elect Trump's administration open its doors to all people or 
will it seek to govern from exploiting old prejudices and pitting us 
against one another? The campaign is over, but the wounds inflicted 
during a long battle remain raw. It is time to set about the work of 
healing them.
  I urge President-Elect Trump to begin that work by surrounding 
himself with people equal to the task. Mr. Bannon is not one of them. 
He should not serve in the next administration. I call on President-
Elect Trump to appeal to America's better angels and to reject the dark 
politics represented by Stephen Bannon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

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