Character matters.
We already know that former Breitbart head and current Trump campaign CEO is an awful person, like pretty much the majority of those Trump has chosen to surround himself with. After the story of his assault charges from his ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, broke this week, it was expected that more would come out.
In a sworn court declaration following their divorce, Piccard said her ex-husband had objected to sending their twin daughters to an elite Los Angeles academy because he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.
“He said he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats,’” Piccard said in a 2007 court filing.
Of course, this is a charge that Bannon denies, and points out that he sent his daughters to the school for their middle school and high school education.
This makes things tricky for the Trump campaign, as Trump and challenger, Hillary Clinton, are currently embroiled in a battle of name-calling, which includes accusing each other of being bigots.
Clinton may have a slight upper hand in this battle. Not that she’s any less bigoted. I doubt she is. Trump, however, has had a long and recent history of saying and doing really bigoted things. Having Bannon as the head of his campaign now, as well as being the hero of the emerging alt-right/white Nationalists movement won’t help him shed that image.
Trump likes to point to his daughter, who converted to Judaism, after marrying Jared Kushner.
That’s about the same as saying some of his best friends are black.
Bannon, however, is a special breed of nasty, and it has been well-attested to by those who have had the extreme displeasure of working for him.
He took Andrew Breitbart’s conservative legacy and turned it into the alt-right’s rallying point from the beginning of Trump’s candidacy.
Bannon’s remarks about Jews followed other comments that caught Piccard’s attention when they were visiting private schools in 2000.
At one school, she said, he asked the director why there were so many Hanukkah books in the library. At another school, he asked Piccard if it bothered her that the school used to be in a temple.
“I said, ‘No,’ and asked why he asked,” Piccard said. “He did not respond.”
Piccard said Bannon wanted the girls to attend a Catholic school.
In 2007, when the girls were accepted at Archer, he told Piccard he objected because of the number of Jews in attendance.
Piccard filed for divorce from Bannon in 1997, a year after the charges of battery, witness intimidation, and domestic violence. Those charges were dropped when she did not show up for the court date.
Piccard said in her declaration that she skipped the trial after Bannon and his lawyer arranged for her to leave town. She said Bannon had told her the lawyer would make her look like the guilty party if she testified and the attorney told her she would be broke if Bannon went to jail.
Lovely.
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