Police Called After Woman Confronts Steve Bannon in Bookstore
A bookstore owner in Richmond, Virginia said he called police after a woman confronted and abused former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in his store.
Speaking to the The Richmond Times-Dispatch Saturday, Black Swan Books owner Nick Cooke said that the woman had called Bannon a "piece of trash."
"Steve Bannon was simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business. I asked her to leave, and she wouldn't. And I said, 'I'm going to call the police if you don't,' and I went to call the police and she left," Cooke said. "And that's the end of the story."
Bannon is the latest former or current member of the Trump administration have been confronted by members of the public and activists.
Days before his resignation last week, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt was filmed being confronted by a mother in a Washington DC restaurant over his policies.
At the height of the controversy over the Trump administration policy of separating children from their undocumented migrant parents at the border, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant.
The incidents have provoked debate about the breakdown of civility in American politics amid division over Trump's policies.
A native of Richmond, Bannon's love of books is well known, and he has been described as "the most well-read person in Washington."
Cooke told the Courier-Dispatch that bookstores are places where different views should be tolerated.
"We are a bookshop. Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody, which is what was happening," Cooke said.
Formerly one of Trump's closest advisers, Bannon is considered one of the architects of the president's populist America First platform. But the two fell out after Bannon was quoted insulting members of Trump's family.
Since leaving the White House last August, he has focussed on rallying support for other populist political challengers in the U.S. and more recently in Europe.
