Nancy Pelosi blasts Steve Bannon as a white supremacist in astonishing House tirade

  • House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi twice called White House chief strategist Steve Bannon a 'white supremacist' today 
  • Pelosi was angry that President Donald Trump had installed Bannon onto the principles committee of the National Security Council 
  • Pelosi's attack echoed ones made by Hillary Clinton, as the Democrats linked Bannon to his former post at Breitbart News and the 'alt-right'  

By Nikki Schwab, U.s. Political Reporter For Dailymail.com

Published: 18:38 EST, 2 February 2017 | Updated: 18:54 EST, 2 February 2017

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi twice called President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon a 'white supremacist' during her weekly Capitol Hill press conference today. 

'What's making America less safe is to have a white supremacist named to the National Security Council as a permanent member, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence are told, "Donald call us, we'll call you,"' the Democratic leader said. 

Pelosi was referring to Trump's reshuffling of the 'principals committee' of the NSC, adding Bannon, the former head of right-wing news site Breitbart, a permanent seat at the table, while seemingly diminishing the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence.

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Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi (left) twice called President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon (right) a 'white supremacist' today 

The White House has since called out media organizations for 'a lot of misreporting' on this particular executive order, with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer calling the claims that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director of national intelligence were demoted 'utter nonsense.' 

He explained during Monday's press briefing that 'they are at every NSC meeting and are welcome to attend every principles meeting as well.' 

But the administration didn't want to burden, for instance, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with an additional meeting on something outside his scope, Spicer explained.  

On Bannon, the White House has defended the move by pointing to the fact that President Barack Obama's adviser David Axelrod would sometimes sit in. 

Both Bannon and Axelrod are political strategists, not national security experts. 

The White House's pushback didn't stop Pelosi from expressing her disgust today. 

'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 as permanent members,' Pelosi said again, at first butchering the title of the second official.

Pelosi wasn't the first prominent Democrat to link Bannon, through his ties to Breitbart, to white supremacy.  

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wasn't buying the White House's comments that the reshuffling of the National Security Council didn't signal a demotion of two prominent members

Bannon, tapped by Trump in August, to lead his presidential campaign, had told Mother Jones a month before, that Breitbart was 'the platform of the alt-right.' 

In August, Trump's rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Reno, Nevada defining the alt-right as just a new term for white nationalism. 

'The names may have changed ... Racists now call themselves "racialists." White supremacists now call themselves "white nationalists." The paranoid fringe now calls itself "alt-right,"' she said. 

'But the hate burns just as brights,' she added. 

Bannon was also featured in a Clinton campaign attack ad, which also featured imagery of the KKK. 

At the time, team Trump fought back, with a campaign surrogate calling the video 'repulsive' and 'revolting.' 

A week after the election, Breitbart News Network threatened to sue a 'major media company' for calling it a 'white nationalist website.'  

There's no evidence that the media company took legal action after the initial threat.

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