For Immediate Release
November 14, 2016
Contact: Max Rosenblum or Graham Roth
202.387.2800 | news@rac.org
Washington, DC - In response to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s naming of Steve Bannon as White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, issued the following statement:
We are deeply disturbed by the announcement from President-elect Trump that he will appoint Steve Bannon to be the White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor. The President is entitled to choose advisors who he believes will help him implement his agenda. However, both in his roles as editor of the Breitbart website and as a strategist in the Trump campaign, Mr. Bannon was responsible for the advancement of ideologies antithetical to our nation, including anti-Semitism, misogyny, racism and Islamophobia. There should be no place for such views in the White House.
President-elect Trump has said he wants to be president for all the people. We urge him in this spirit to assemble a leadership team that reflects that aspiration.
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The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism is the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism, whose nearly 900 congregations across North America encompass 1.5 million Reform Jews, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, whose membership includes more than 2,000 Reform rabbis. Visit www.rac.org for more.
