[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14367]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             REJECT STEVE BANNON'S WHITE HOUSE APPOINTMENT

  (Mr. CICILLINE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Speaker, earlier today, I led 168 of my colleagues 
in sending a letter to President-elect Donald Trump, asking that he 
rescind his decision to appoint alt-right leader Steve Bannon to serve 
as White House Chief Strategist. This appointment undermines the 
President-elect's pledge to bring our country together.
  As executive chairman of Breitbart News, Mr. Bannon repeatedly and 
aggressively pushed stories that promote anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and 
racism. During an interview last summer, Mr. Bannon bragged that 
Breitbart was ``the platform for the alt-right,'' a movement that 
upholds White nationalism while strongly rejecting diversity in any 
form.
  Under his leadership, Breitbart has referred to a leading Republican 
columnist as a renegade Jew. He suggested that young Muslims in the 
West are a ticking time bomb. He declared that the Confederate flag 
proclaims a glorious heritage, and he praised the alt-right as a 
smarter version of old-school racist skinheads.
  I hope that the President-elect and Republican Members of Congress 
will join us in good faith in rejecting Mr. Bannon's appointment and 
the ugly, divisive message it sends to so many across our country.

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