President-elect Donald Trump said he wants to find out if and why he is “energizing” white supremacists.
“It’s not a group I want to energize,” Trump said Tuesday in a meeting with New York Times editorial staff, according to a tweet by Maggie Haberman, a reporter in attendance. Trump was referring to the so-called "alt-right," a loosely knit assemblage of white nationalists, anti-globalists, anti-Semites, anti-immigration advocates and people who revile political correctness. “And if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why.”
Trump also defended his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, from charges that he has traded in racism and anti-Semitism.
“If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him,” said Trump of Bannon, who formerly led the Breitbart news website. “I think it’s very hard on him. I think he’s having a hard time with it. Because it’s not him.”
Of Breitbart, Trump said it is “just a publication” with a conservative outlook “that has become quite successful.”
Trump also said he would “love” to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace, and suggested that his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could help.