ADL: No Anti-Semitic Statements from Trump's Top Strategist

The liberal Anti-Defamation League is now backing off from its earlier allegations that incoming Trump Chief White House Strategist Stephen K. Bannon is an anti-Semite.

The ADL is now saying that it is “not aware of any anti-Semitic statements made by Bannon himself.”

Earlier this week, ADL President Jonathan Greenblat, a former Obama administration aide, blasted President-elect Donald Trump for appointing Bannon as his top strategist. Greenblatt accused Bannon of presiding over “the premier website of the Alt-Right, a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists.”

What is the truth, and why this negative response to Bannon? Watch the interview clips with Aaron Klein to hear a perspective from someone who knows Bannon well and debunks the accusations against the conservative strategist.

The former CEO of Breibart News,  Bannon served as Trump’s campaign chairman and holds an MBA from Harvard University and an MA from Georgetown University. He worked as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, and served as special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. 

Conservative author David Horowitz and political commentator Pamela Geller—both Jews—wrote columns defending Bannon. Jewish employees of Breibart News and others have also come to Bannon’s defense.

Among them is Aaron Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for Breitbart News. Klein told CBN News by phone that Bannon recruited him about a year ago to start Breitbart Jerusalem for the specific purpose of “shining a light of accuracy on the Middle East and specifically on Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict because the news media has been distorting so many news stories and spinning them against the Jewish state.”

Klein says Bannon is a lover of Israel and a champion of the United States and Israel. He calls the ADL allegations an “Alice through the looking glass inversion of reality because it is the exact opposite of the truth.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also criticized Trump’s appointment of Bannon as his White House chief strategist. CAIR called him an Islamophobe who has “instigated fear and loathing of Muslims in America.”

Klein tells what's really behind the accusations against his former boss, Stephen K. Bannon: