In the wake of Roy Moore’s loss to Democrat Doug Jones, a New York congressman lashed out at former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon this morning as looking like a “disheveled drunk” who’s blowing elections for the GOP.
Bannon rallied heavily for Moore, saying the evening before the vote that “all the establishment out there doesn’t have Trump’s back at all” and “there’s a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better.” That appeared to be a dig at Ivanka Trump, who said after claims surfaced that Moore allegedly abused or sought relationships with underage girls that there’s “special place in hell for people who prey on children.”
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) told CNN this morning that he brought up Bannon “not even so much as a political issue, almost as a moral issue.”
“This guy does not belong on the national stage. He looks like some disheveled drunk that wandered on to the political stage. He’s not representing what I stand for. I consider myself a conservative Republican. I consider myself an Irish-Catholic. And he sort of parades himself out there with his weird, alt-right views that he has. And, to me, it’s demeaning the whole governmental and political process,” King blasted.
The Alabama election was intended by Bannon, King charged, to be spreading “his type of divisive views… trying to undercut the president on his foreign policy, whether he makes — he encourages racial division.”
“This is not the type of person we need in politics,” the congressman added, saying he has “no problem” taking on the Breitbart chief.
“Listen, you have to fight for what’s right. And, again, he’s attacking the president’s daughter the other night when he took a shot at Ivanka Trump, mocking her expression ‘a special place in hell.’ This person, to me, Bannon, does not belong on the American political scene. And there’s nothing there that I identify with and there’s nothing there that really good Republicans or good Americans should identify with,” King continued.
The New York Republican said Bannon “got too much credit” for President Trump’s victory.
King opined that Trump should “stay above” getting into Twitter fights as leader of the free world, including with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
“I think the president, again, should stop those type of tweets and he should realize that, again, you can attack somebody — listen, I just said this morning that I think Bannon looks like a disheveled drunk. And the reason I said that was, he goes out of his way to put on this everyman image when he’s a Goldman Sachs millionaire,” the congressman said. “But, no, as far as actually going after somebody personally, I try not to do it. Again, we can throw punches, we can hit each other hard, but you try not to hit low.”
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