Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign welcomed the Republican Donald Trump’s campaign shake-up Wednesday as proof he was doubling down on a being a racist and a bigot who spouts crazy conspiracy theories.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Mr. Trump’s hire of Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon for campaign CEO revealed that Mr. Trump was going full-blown racist.
“Donald Trump has decided to double down on his most small, nasty and device instinct by tuning his campaign over to someone who is best known for running a so-called news cite that peddles divisive, at times racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” he said in a conference call with reporters.
He said the hire showed that Mr. Trump was rebuffing calls from GOP establishment for more campaign discipline and scripted speeches and less wild talk.
“He has officially won the fight to let Trump be Trump,” Mr. Mook said. “He keeps telling us who he is. It’s time we believe him.”
He said that Mr. Trump and his new campaign CEO also share a love of conspiracy theories, noting they both questioned whether President Obama was born in the U.S. and that Breitbart accused the Obama administration of ” “importing more hating Muslims.”
The heightened assault on Mr. Trump for being racist, which has been tactic of the Clinton campaign and its allies, follows Mr. Trump’s aggressive appeal to black voters the night before, when he made the case that decades of misguided Democratic policies have blighted inner-city neighborhoods.
“It is clear that his decisive, erratic and dangerous rhetoric simply represents who he really is, and he has decided to double down on his most divisive, hateful erratic statements and behavior,” he said.
Mr. Mook quoted the Southern Poverty Law Center’s scathing assessment of Breibart News under Mr. Bannon’s leadership, which said it had “undergone a noticeable shift towards embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right, racist ideas, race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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