TIES TO WHITE RACIAL HATE GROUPS BY TRUMP CABINET AND WHITE HOUSE ADVISORS DRAW SCRUTINY

By Miriam Raftery

August 15, 2017 (Washington D.C.) -- President Donald Trump’s long tolerance of violence and hate speech by white  hate groups has long drawn criticism, brought to the forefront following his two-day-belated denouncement of deadly violence in Charlottesville at the hands of a neo-Nazi during a white supremacists  rally. 

Trump has repeatedly said he is not a racist. But now a spotlight is being shown on several Trump cabinet members with prominent ties to white supremacists.

Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump, wore an Order of Vitez badge, tunic and ring on Fox News on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, Times of Israel reported. According to the U.S. State Department, this Order was “under the direction of the Nazi government of Germany” during World War II and its members could be deemed ineligible for admission to the U.S.

The New York Times reported in April that April 2017 that Gorka "has been accused of having links to far-right groups in Europe.”  He has also worked for Breitbart News, the alt-right media outlet formerly headed by Steve Bannon which has provided a platform for white supremacist propaganda.

Adam Jentleson, spokesman for then Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said: “It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide,” the Guardian reports.

Sebastian Gorka’s wife, Katharine Gorka, ended the Trump administration’s funding through Homeland Security for groups that combat white Supremacy, Huffington Post reports.  She, too, has bylined articles at Breitbart focused on Muslim extremism while ignoring violence by white supremacists.

Yet Foreign Policy magazine reported yesterday that “the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.  Even as President Donald Trump continues to resist calling out white supremacists for violence, federal law enforcement has made clear that it sees these types of domestic extremists as a severe threat.”

Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, formerly an Alabama Senator, was once denied a judicial seat due to Congressional concerns over his actions as a U.S. Attorney viewed by critics as racist toward African-Americans. As Attorney General, he has diverted some civil rights enforcement funding to investigate potentially negative impacts of affirmative action on white students.

The Guardian, in an article published yesterday, documents other Trump ties to white supremacist racists. Also of note, his cabinet is almost entirely white males, as are White House interns show in in this photo, with no apparent effort made to provide racial, ethnic, or gender diversity.