Elijah Cummings: MLK would be appalled to see 'white supremacist-type' Steve Bannon in the White House

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) on Tuesday blasted the White House's decision to employ Steve Bannon as its chief political strategist, as he said it made a mockery of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy.

Talking with Morning Joe on the 49th anniversary of King's assassination in 1968, Cummings said that while King would have been pleased to see America finally elect a black president, he would have been "very disappointed" by the Trump administration employing someone like Bannon, who ran a right-wing news website that had a whole section dedicated to "black crime."

"When we see a guy like Bannon, who is, as far as I'm concerned, a white supremacist-type person, sitting in the White House... and I'm paying his salary, I think he would be very disappointed," Cummings told the program, per Politico.

Cummings also told the show that he told Trump to stop talking about investigating "voter fraud," which he said does not exist in any meaningful scope. Instead, he said the president should fight voter suppression measures that are designed to lower turnout among African American voters.

"You can't do an investigation on voter fraud when it doesn't exist, when you've got people who can't even vote, African-Americans and others," he said. "Come on, man. And so, we haven't heard too much more about that voter fraud investigation. I don't know if you noticed that."