It’s actually happening. The presidential administration of Donald Trump is taking form a week after the controversial businessman shocked the world with his stunning upset. Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus was hired to be White House Chief of Staff after days of speculation, and then another shock announcement was made.

Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News was hired to be the chief strategist and senior counselor to the Trump Administration.

The Democratic Party and aligned leftwing activists have responded with outrage. Trump himself has been criticized as being a racist this entire election cycle for comments about Muslims, Mexicans, and other groups. Now Bannon is being criticized for a number of questionable headlines that were published by Breitbart News during his tensure.

How could Donald Trump support a racist and white supremacist by installing him into a position of power?

The criticism is perhaps interesting, if not ironic, coming from the left. Has the Democratic Party forgotten about Robert Byrd?

The late Robert Byrd, who passed away in 2010, is a career politician who served in Congress as a registered Democrat. While World War II hero turned President of the United States Dwight Eisenhower was fighting segregation and racism, Byrd was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1959, he would begin a record-setting tenure as United States Senator lasting until his death in 2010.

Byrd was also President pro tempore starting in 1989 while the Democrats had control, which would put him third in the presidential line of succession. This alone is a significant position to have beyond being the longest-serving member of the United States Senator.

Before all of this, Robert Byrd was a member of the white supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan. In the early forties, he even founded his own chapter. After being a leader and recruited for the organization, he was later unanimously elected as Exalted Cyclops, a top leadership position. The Exalted Cyclops’s subordinates were known as the twelve terrors.

As a member of the KKK, Byrd once said he would “Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels” than serve with a “Negro” by his side. This was in response to possibly fighting alongside black soldiers in the military.

Is this the kind of influence Democrats want to embrace for their party?

Racism itself was a trend for the party. Around the time Byrd was wearing white and peddling white supremacist hatred, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was rounding up innocent Japanese American citizens and forcing them into internment camps. The reason for this was because of their heritage and ancestry.

But the Democrats want to feign outrage over white supremacy and racism?

There may or may not be concerns surrounding the time Steve Bannon was at Breitbart. If Bannon did embrace white supremacy, racism, and other hateful themes, they certainly should be disavowed.

With all of that said, the Democratic Party is hardly in a position to criticize anyone for their racist past. They have their own skeletons in their closet.