ATLANTA -- After former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon said he believes Martin Luther King, Jr. would be "proud" of what President Donald Trump has done for African Americans and Latinos, King's daughter, Rev. Bernice King, answered back derisively.
In an interview Sunday, Bannon told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl that King would be proud of what Trump had done, echoing a similar response he had given to the BBC in May.
After Bannon's statements in May, Bernice King responded on Twitter, saying that Bannon "has dangerously and erroneously co-opted my father's name, works and words."
"Bannon's assertion that my father," she said, continuing, "would be proud of Donald Trump wholly ignores Daddy's commitment to people of all races, nationalities, etc. being treated with dignity and respect."
King pointed out that her father was concerned with not just blacks in America but with all people.
"My father's concerns were not sectional, but global," she said. "He was an activist for the civil rights of Black people in America, but he was also an activist for human rights."
"Further, he would not refer to people as 'illegal aliens,'" King continued. "The term is degrading and does not reflect his belief that we are all a part of the human family."
"In addition, he would never pit one group against another in the struggle for justice, as Bannon attempts to use him to do in discussing those he termed as 'illegal aliens' and Black people."
"Bannon's comments are like feeding someone empty calories, in that they don't convey a comprehensive view of #MLK as a global humanitarian who cared about the well-being of all people."
"My father would be extremely disturbed by the climate created by leaders, who have emboldened people to easily express and demonstrate cruelty, predominantly toward people of color and immigrants."
While King's comments came in late May, some of them directly addressed the ongoing migrant situation at the US-Mexico border. As families and children arrive at the border, children are being separated from their parents under a policy referred to by the Trump Administration as "Zero Tolerance."
On Sunday, King quoted her father as she more directly addressed the separation of children and parents at the border crossings.
"In the words of my father, 'to ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.' Separating children from their parents is beyond inhumane; it is evil.'
On her Facebook page, King posted photographs of children being separated from their parents, calling the act surreal and troubling.
