Trump's Chief Strategist Steve Bannon Reportedly Favored Idea of Only Property Owners Being Allowed to Vote

When president-elect Donald Trump named Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor, white nationalists were thrilled—and with good reason. Bannon used to run the inflammatory, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, Islamophobic, white nationalist website Breitbart, which he described as "the platform for the alt-right." Bannon's history of bigotry is pretty clear at this point but if you needed even more proof, well, unfortunately, we have some: ​the New York Times reports that Bannon used to talk about "the genetic superiority of some people" and also wished he could limit the vote to only property owners.

Julia Jones was working with Steve Bannon as co-writers on a Ronald Reagan documentary in the early 2000s. Over the years Jones worked with him, Bannon "occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners," according to the New York Times.

When Bannon made the argument about who should be allowed to vote, Jones said she replied, "That would exclude a lot of African-Americans." To that, Bannon allegedly replied, "Maybe that's not such a bad thing."

At that point, Jones brought up Wendy Colbert, Bannon's longtime assistant who is black. "But what about Wendy?" Jones asked. Bannon then tried to explain, "She's different. She's family."

Jones, who describes herself as very liberal, is quoted earlier in the article dismissing accusations that Bannon is a racist. "Steve's not a racist," she said. "He's using the alt-right—using them for power."

The report led Shaun King to wonder in the New York Daily News, "Have we crossed a threshold where ethics, integrity, and truthfulness, alongside issues like racism and bigotry, are no longer disqualifiers to work in the White House?" Bannon's comments, King concluded, make his views painfully clear: "When a man says he’d prefer to see only landowners vote, which has not been the law in this country for nearly 200 years, the phrase 'Make America Great Again' all of a sudden makes a lot more sense."

Even before this report came out, when Trump first chose Bannon as his Chief Strategist, Seth Meyers argued that the decision alone shows that Trump doesn't even deserve a chance at the Oval Office.