"I think he’s the person that’s pulling the strings," Madeleine Albright said of Stephen Bannon. | Getty Albright on Trump: Bannon 'pulling the strings'

Referring to him as President Donald Trump's puppet master, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright condemned the placement of Steve Bannon on the National Security Council.

"I think he’s the person that’s pulling the strings," she said of Bannon during an appearance Sunday on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" alongside Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush.


Bannon was elevated by Trump by executive action on Jan. 28 to the NSC at the same time as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence were demoted to less-significant roles.

Albright, who was secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, said she found Bannon to be a troubling presence in general.

"The influence generally of Mr. Bannon is passing strange," she told Zakaria, noting a reputed fondness on Bannon's behalf for Vladimir Lenin.

Hadley, while not as critical of the appointment as Albright, pointed out that Bush rejected the idea of Karl Rove sitting in with the National Security Council as it might appear security decisions were being made on a political basis. He did note that President Barack Obama did allow David Axelrod to sometimes attend as an observer.

Albright, whose family fled Czechoslovakia and Nazism when she was a baby, had previously tweeted multiple objections to Trump's immigration ban, including this one from Jan. 25: "I was raised Catholic, became Episcopalian & found out later my family was Jewish. I stand ready to register as Muslim in #solidarity."

On Sunday, she restated her objection.

"This is not America, where we ban people by religion," she said.

