Steve Bannon just got his prison marching orders, and he’s screwed himself in more ways than one
Steve Bannon’s business model seems to consist of talking about how dangerously powerful he is, baiting the media into doing ratings-driven stories about how dangerously powerful he is, and goading folks on our side into obsessively cowering about how dangerously powerful he is, all so that the dummies on his side will believe it and financially support him – even though he never seems to have any actual impact on elections and such.
Bannon has been self destructing for some time. He lost Breitbart. He lost his biggest financial backers. He somehow managed to get fired from the Trump White House for incompetence, which wasn’t supposed to be possible. Then he got arrested on a boat by the postal service, which is just hilarious. Then he handled the January 6th Committee probe so stupidly that he ended up being one of the very few hostile witnesses to receive a prison sentence.
Yet we keep hearing, from both sides, about what a dangerously powerful evil genius this guy supposedly is. We keep hearing that he’s the reason Trump won in 2016, even though there’s no evidence of that. We keep hearing that he’s going to somehow magically rig the 2024 election for Trump, though there’s no evidence of that either.
The Steve Bannon saga is one of those instances where the narrative and the reality couldn’t be more opposite. And yet because he’s not yet in prison, we keep hearing about how he’s “getting away with it all.” But even that narrative has landed today with a thud.
Bannon managed to delay his four month prison sentence for contempt of Congress by appealing it. But this has turned out to be a very stupid move on his part. He had a court hearing today and was ordered to report to prison on July 1st. He’s out of appeals and will absolutely have to show up to prison. So much for getting away with it all. But it gets worse for him.
If Bannon had simply done his four months when he was supposed to, he’d be out of prison by now. But because he delayed things, he’ll now be in prison for nearly all of the 2024 election cycle. If he was planning to spend the election cycle using his political podcast to raise funds for himself, now he won’t be able to do that anymore.
Bannon is also set to stand trial on state charges in New York, after he got caught raising money to build an imaginary Trump border wall. That trial is tentatively set to start in September or October. If that timeframe holds, Bannon will still be in federal prison while he’s on state level criminal trial – which will obviously make his life more difficult. And if Bannon is convicted in his New York trial, he’ll likely receive a multi-year prison sentence.
Imagine being a political strategist who’s so bad at strategy that you manage to put yourself in prison during the presidential election cycle. Imagine being a con artist who’s so bad a crime that you’re going on criminal trial while already in prison. Steve Bannon has always been all hype, a self destructive idiot who’s never managed to impact an election in his life. Now everyone is finally seeing it.
