White nationalists praise Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

last updated 15 November 2016

Donald Trump may have angered Democrats and some Republicans with his selection of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, but white nationalists say they are on board.

Bannon is the former head of the hard-right website Breitbart, and his ex-wife has accused him in court of making anti-Semitic comments (his spokesman has denied the allegations). Trump was endorsed by the KKK, and former leader David Duke told CNN's KFile on Monday he believes the Bannon appointment is "excellent. I think that anyone that helps complete the program and the policies that President-elect Trump has developed during the campaign is a very good thing, obviously. So it's good to see that he's sticking to the issues and the ideas that he proposed as a candidate."

Duke said Bannon is "basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going. And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government." Rocky J. Suhayda, the chairman of the American Nazi Party, told CNN he was surprised Trump chose Bannon, because he thought his "stable of Washington insiders would have objected too vociferously," but he's now hopeful Trump will "rock the boat." You can read more of what leading white supremacists and neo-Nazis have to say about Bannon at CNN.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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