House minority caucuses ask Trump to oust Bannon, Miller, Gorka

(Image credit: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

published 15 August 2017

Leaders of the House black, Hispanic, Asian, and progressive caucuses sent a letter to President Trump on Monday asking him to remove three top White House aides: chief strategist Stephen Bannon, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, and deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka.

"Americans deserve to know that white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis are not in a position to influence U.S. policy," the letter said, per The Associated Press. "In this time of tumult in our country, Americans deserve a leader that will bring us all together and denounce those who seek to tear us apart."

Bannon is widely viewed as the leader of the self-proclaimed "economic nationalist" wing in the Trump White House and is already reportedly at loggerheads with new Chief of Staff John Kelly. Miller is the adviser most known for his combative interview style as well as his disavowal of the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Gorka, whose background is in counter-terrorism and counter-espionage, most recently made headlines for saying shortly before the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, that the media is misguided in saying, "It's the white supremacists. That's the problem." "Go to the Middle East, and tell me what the real problem is today," Gorka added. "Go to Manchester."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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