In October 2012, just before the November presidential election, while speaking with Conservative Republican Forum Radio to promote his documentary The Hope and the Change, Stephen Bannon slammed Mitt Romney’s five sons because they served as Mormon missionaries instead of serving in the military.
Bannon, now Donald Trump’s campaign chairman but at the time still CEO of Breitbart News, said:
Mitt Romney goes to the Republican convention, gives his acceptance speech, people give him a standing ovation, and he doesn’t have the common decency to say one thing about our troops fighting in Afghanistan? This is a guy who avoided military duty in Vietnam; who has five sons who look like movie stars who have not served their country one day. Oh, but by the way all of them did their two years of Mormon missionary service — every one of them.
Bannon apparently does not have the same problem with his current boss; Romney received four draft deferments during the Vietnam war; three for his academic studies and one for Mormon missionary work; Trump received eight draft deferments.
Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, who is Mormon, told BuzzFeed News, “This is the kind of revolting intolerance Donald Trump embraces and encourages when he hires a thug like Steve Bannon, who profits from racism, anti-Semitism and religious bigotry against everyone from Mormons to Muslims. Religious, racial and other intolerance should have no place in American public life. Steve Bannon and Donald Trump obviously disagree.”
According to Breitbart, Bannon served for seven years as a surface warfare officer in the Navy.
