DAVID GERGEN: Listen, I respect what Rebecca said, most of what she said. But the fact is that Mr. Bannon represents and has sent out a lot of signals to people, as someone you should be scared of, as someone who supports policies that are going to represent this administration, that it's going to be very harsh on Muslims, that it's going to be -- it's going to withdraw basically support for criminal -- social justice in a criminal system. It does not -- it's going to downgrade that, that it's going to go after people in various ways. I have people crying in my classroom, I have people who were, you know, grieving about what's happened, but mostly, they're scared.
They're scared for their families, they don't know what this means, and I'm sorry, when the “alt-right” is taken as seriously as it is, and we begin to normalize this conversation, to say, it's all right to do neo-Nazi kind of rhetoric and we're just going to accept it, it's just part of who we are as Americans. No, it is not all right to be neo-Nazi in this country.
And we, just as -- if we're going to raise those specters, let's remember when people didn't rise up against the Nazis, when they were in their midst. And if -- it is not right, and the president himself has to be the standard bearer of this, he has to be seen as a president of all the people.
[...]
REBECCA BERG: But at the same time, you don't want to give unnecessary oxygen to some of this hateful rhetoric, and there is the potential to do that.
GERGEN: It's Breitbart that gave them the unnecessary oxygen. Breitbart was the one that helped them, gave them the platform. That's what Mr. Bannon said.
