GRAPHIC: White Supremacy and White Nationalism in the Trump Administration
Following eight years of the United States' first black president, Barack Obama, white supremacy and white nationalism have invaded the White House. The current president, Donald Trump, as well as several of the people he has appointed to his administration, have ties to white supremacist and white nationalist individuals, groups and ideas. The following is a chart of those ties; it will be updated if new relationships become apparent.
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Donald Trump 45th President of the United States
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Stephen "Steve" Bannon Former White House Chief Strategist, Former Special Counselor to the President
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Stephen Miller Senior Advisor to the President
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Jefferson "Jeff" Sessions Former Attorney General of the United States
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Sebastian Gorka Former Deputy Assistant to the President
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Michael "Mike" T. Flynn Former National Security Advisor
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Michael Anton Former Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications
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Ian M. Smith Former Department of Homeland Security Analyst
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Darren Beattie Former Speechwriter for President Trump
DETAILS
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Donald Trump 45th President of the United States • Trump has appointed to his administration several people with white supremacist and/or white nationalist views as well as connections to white supremacist and/or white nationalist circles.
• He has signed two executive orders, Executive Order 13769 and Executive Order 13780, that have banned or limited immigration from majority-Muslim countries. These orders are commonly referred to as "Muslim bans."
• He has repeatedly made implicitly and explicitly racist comments including questioning President Barack Obama's birthplace and dismissing a federal judge's qualifications because of his Mexican heritage.
• He was endorsed by numerous white nationalist and white supremacist individuals and organizations including Richard Spencer, former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke and neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer.
• He had repeatedly promoted white nationalist people, ideas and narratives on Twitter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13780 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/us/politics/donald-trump-white-identity.html?_r=0 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/president-donald-trump-racist-examples_us_584f2ccae4b0bd9c3dfe5566 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-hate-groups-neo-nazi-white-supremacist-racism https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trump-white-nationalism/568393/ ↑ BACK TO CHART -
Stephen "Steve" Bannon Former White House Chief Strategist, Former Special Counselor to the President • Bannon is the former executive chair of Breitbart News Network, a far-right website that he has described as a "platform for the alt-right." The "alt-right" is defined by the Anti-Defamation League as "a range of people on the extreme right who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of forms of conservatism that embrace implicit or explicit racism or white supremacy." The term was coined by white nationalist Richard Spencer.
• Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin praised Breitbart for going "hardcore" after Bannon became its executive chair, further stating that Breitbart's content is "basically stuff that you would read on [Anglin's neo-Nazi site] the Daily Stormer."
• Bannon's appointment was praised by white nationalists and white supremacists including former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke, white nationalist publisher Peter Brimelow and Chairman of the American Nazi Party Rocky Suhayda. https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/alt-right-a-primer-about-the-new-white-supremacy https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/03/01/breitbart-under-bannon-how-breitbart-became-favorite-news-source-neo-nazis-and-white http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/why-its-fair-and-necessary-call-trumps-chief-strategist-stephen-bannon-white-nationalist http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/14/politics/white-nationalists-on-bannon/index.html ↑ BACK TO CHART -
Breitbart News Network Far-Right Website • Breitbart regularly publishes racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic articles. The website also features an area dedicated to "black crime."
• Breitbart has regularly promoted conspiracy theories including the racist "birther" conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya. Breitbart has also published articles promoting President Trump's false claim that President Obama wiretapped him and false allegations that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were involved in a pedophile ring working out of a pizza shop. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/04/28/breitbartcom-becoming-media-arm-alt-right https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/here-are-some-of-the-most-controversial-stories-published-by http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/pictures/10-most-despicable-stories-breitbart-published-under-bannon-w452226 https://www.queerty.com/10-antigay-headlines-overseen-trumps-top-advisor-steve-bannon-20161114 https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2017-03-07/breitbart-fuels-donald-trumps-wiretapping-and-other-conspiracy-theories ↑ BACK TO CHART
Stephen Miller Senior Advisor to the President • Miller was an associate of white nationalist Richard Spencer while the two attended Duke University. They worked with each other to organize an event with Peter Brimelow, founder of the white nationalist publication VDARE.
• Miller regularly derided multiculturalism and immigration in articles and radio appearances during high school and college. One high school classmate described him as having "an intense hatred toward people of color, especially toward Latinos."
• He is one of the architects of President Trump's nationalist, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant "America First" agenda, including Executive Order 13769, often referred to as the "Muslim ban."
• He served as Attorney General Jeff Sessions's communications director when Sessions was a U.S. Senator for Alabama. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2017/01/very-young-person-in-the-white-house-on-a-power-trip https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/stephen-miller-a-key-engineer-for-trumps-america-first-agenda/2017/02/11/a70cb3f0-e809-11e6-bf6f-301b6b443624_story.html http://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/how-white-house-advisor-stephen-miller-went-from-pestering-hispanic-students-to-designing-trumps-immigration-policy ↑ BACK TO CHART
Richard Spencer President of the National Policy Institute • Spencer is president of The National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank.
• He advocates for ethnic cleansing and for the creation of a white ethno-state in North America. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/richard-bertrand-spencer-0 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist ↑ BACK TO CHART
Jefferson "Jeff" Sessions Former Attorney General of the United States • In 1986, Sessions's nomination to a district court was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee after his history of racism was revealed during confirmation hearings.
• During the hearings, black Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Figures testified that Sessions had made several racist and racially insensitive comments including calling him "boy." Coretta Scott King wrote a letter to the Committee stating that Sessions had used his office as U.S. Attorney to "intimidate and frighten elderly black voters." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/12/02/jeff-sessionss-comments-on-race-for-the-record/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/01/10/read-the-letter-coretta-scott-king-wrote-opposing-sessionss-1986-federal-nomination/ ↑ BACK TO CHART
Sebastian Gorka Former Deputy Assistant to the President • Gorka, a naturalized U.S. Citizen born in London to Hungarian parents, wore a medal from the Vitézi Rend during Trump's inauguration. The Vitézi Rend is a Hungarian nationalist group that was allied with Nazi Germany during World War II. He has also twice signed his name with the marker "v.", an initial that only members of the Vitézi Rend are permitted to use.
• Three leaders of the Vitézi Rend have stated that Gorka is a sworn member of the group.
• He has repeatedly expressed Islamophobic views, including the idea that Islam is inherently violent. http://forward.com/news/366339/sebastian-gorka-what-is-the-evidence-and-why-does-it-matter/ http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/sebastian-gorka-donald-trump-white-house https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/for-a-trump-adviser-an-odyssey-from-the-fringes-of-washington-to-the-center-of-power/2017/02/20/0a326260-f2cb-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html ↑ BACK TO CHART
Michael "Mike" T. Flynn Former National Security Advisor • He has promoted Islamophobia, declaring that "Fear of Muslims is rational" on Twitter in February 2016.
• He tagged racist conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich as well as anti-Semite Jared Wyland in several of his tweets. He also re-tweeted an anti-Semitic comment blaming Jewish people for criticism of Russia. He later deleted that re-tweet, claiming that it was a "mistake."
• Flynn's appointment was praised by former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke.
• On February 13, 2017, Flynn resigned as National Security Advisor after The Washington Post reported that he had discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak prior to Donald Trump's inauguration. http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/kfile-flynn-tweets/ http://fusion.kinja.com/white-supremacists-are-absolutely-loving-donald-trumps-1793863834 ↑ BACK TO CHART
Michael Anton Former Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications • Called diversity "a source of weakness, tension and disunion."
• Called Islam a "militant faith that exalts conversion by the sword and inspires thousands to acts of terror."
• Wrote of immigration, "America is not a 'nation of immigrants'; we are originally a nation of settlers, who later chose to admit immigrants, and later still not to, and who may justly open or close our doors solely at our own discretion, without deference to forced pieties."
• On April 8, 2018, Anton resigned after John Bolton was hired as President Trump's National Security Advisor. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-anton-trump-essay-publius-decius-mus_n_589ba947e4b09bd304bff3c8 https://splinternews.com/there-is-nothing-more-highbrow-than-white-supremacy-1825522090 ↑ BACK TO CHARTIan M. Smith Former Department of Homeland Security Analyst • In August 2018, email threads including Smith and white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Jared Tayler were obtained by The Atlantic in 2018.
• Before joining the Trump administration, Smith worked for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a legal organization founded and affliated with Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a anti-immigrant organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. • Smith resigned on August 28, 2018 after he was questioned about his contact with white nationalists. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/emails-link-former-dhs-policy-analyst-to-white-nationalists/568843/ ↑ BACK TO CHARTDarren Beattie Former Speechwriter for Donald Trump • Beattie gave a speech at the white nationalist H.L. Mencken Club Conference in 2016.
• Beattie was fired in mid-August 2018 after CNN asked the White House for comment on its story about Beattie's involvement in the 2016 conference. https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/19/politics/darren-beattie-mencken-club/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-speechwriter-fired-amid-scrutiny-of-appearance-with-white-nationalists/2018/08/19/f5051b52-a3eb-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html ↑ BACK TO CHART