*Sigh*

And while none of this absolutely makes Donald Trump a racist, or even an enabler of racists and that ideology, they still seem unusually drawn to him.

His refusal to condemn them, outright, is that sticking point that draws people back with suspicion.

That, and his associations.

President-elect Donald Trump is drawing praise from the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white nationalist groups for appointing former Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist.

“Perhaps The Donald is for real,” Rocky Suhayda, chairman of the American Nazi Party, told CNN in an segment that included interviews with several white nationalists.

Trump did disavow David Duke and the KKK back during the primaries, but only after several days and several unflattering media reports on the matter.

Bannon will “push Trump in the right direction,” suggested Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute. “That would be a wonderful thing.”

“It makes sense to me,” added Brad Griffin, author of the white nationalist website Occidental Dissent.

Bannon “will hold Trump to the promises he has already made during the campaign,” Griffin added.

“We endorse many of those promises like building the wall, deportations, ending refugee resettlement, preserving the Second Amendment.”

And Bannon is just a wretched character. His presence on Trump’s team adds nothing but chaos.

In fact, it will be hard for Trump to continue to disavow the racist, anti-Semitic portion of his fan base with Bannon on board.

Bannon told Mother Jones over the summer that his conservative news outlet was “the platform of the alt-right,” a far-right ideology that promotes white supremacy.

Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart ran headlines such as: “Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,” “Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield,” and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

Bannon has also made anti-Catholic comments about Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on his radio show.

I have a theory, and it all goes to the rumors of Trump TV and the Donald’s desire to build a viewership and get out quick, rather than actually win.

Perhaps he thought that having Bannon around would make things so ugly, that he would lose, decisively. It just didn’t work.

Whatever his reasoning for bringing in such a loathsome man in such a high profile position, we have not heard the last of it, nor will we, anytime soon.