The Dark History of the White House Aides Who Crafted Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’
For nearly a year before stepping down as the CEO of Breitbart News to lead the Trump campaign, Bannon hosted a SiriusXM radio show, Breitbart News Daily, where he conducted dozens of interviews with leading anti-Muslim extremists. Steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, the interviews paint a dark and paranoid picture of America’s 3.3 million Muslims and the world’s second-largest faith. Bannon often bookended the exchanges with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as “top experts” and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them.
One of Bannon’s guests on the show, Trump surrogate Roger Stone, warned of a future America “where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that’s what’s coming.”
Another frequent guest was Pamela Geller, the president of Stop Islamization of America, whom Bannon described as “one of the top world experts on radical Islam and Sharia law and Islamic supremacism.” Geller told Bannon that George W. Bush’s description of Islam as a “religion of peace” was something “we all deplore,” that there had been an “infiltration” of the Obama administration by radical Muslims, and that former Central Intelligence Director John Brennan may have secretly converted to Islam. Bannon never pushed back against any of those unfounded claims.
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