Pelosi Calls On Trump To Fire Bannon After Charlottesville
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi renewed her call to fire White House advisor Steve Bannon following last week's deadly attack stemming from a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Pelosi (D-San Francisco) on Monday called Bannon an "alt-right white supremacist sympathizer and a shameless enforcer of those un-American beliefs."
The House Democratic Leader made her remarks after President Donald Trump condemned white supremacists involved in the violence Monday.
"If the President is sincere about rejecting white supremacists, he should remove all doubt by firing Steve Bannon and the other alt-right white supremacist sympathizers in the White House," Pelosi said.
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Trump had faced criticism over his initial response to the violence on Saturday, in which he did not directly condemn hate groups.
"President Trump's failure to immediately denounce white supremacy is well in line with the unmistakable conduct of his Administration toward immigrants, Muslims, and communities of color," Pelosi said.
Pelosi has made multiple statements in the past calling for the removal of Bannon, who ran the ultra-conservative Breitbart News website before leading Trump's 2016 campaign.
After last year's election, Bannon was appointed to a role in the Trump White House.
"There must be no sugarcoating the reality that a white nationalist has been named chief strategist for the Trump Administration," the representative from San Francisco said in November.
The House Democratic Leader also condemned Bannon's appointment to the National Security Council during the early days of the Trump administration.
"It's a stunning thing that a white supremacist, Bannon, would be a permanent member of the National Security Council and dismissing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director of national intelligence," Pelosi said during a news conference on February 2nd.
Trump removed Bannon from the National Security Council in April.
