As a Catholic, I can also say that it’s highly appropriate that Bannon received a priest’s blessing before he entered the confines of the prison. That’s the kind of thing which a political martyr like him deserves.
And make no mistake, Steve Bannon is a political martyr. There is no other way to interpret what happened to him in this case. In case you’ve forgotten, let me remind you why Steve Bannon is in prison in the first place: because he refused to play ball with the so-called January 6th Committee. And good for him. Because a more accurate term for that body would be the January 6th Comintern, so completely did the group of partisan Democrats and bitter #NeverTrump dead enders like Liz Cheney resemble a Stalinist show trial of President Trump. Their eventual report, which predictably recommended that President Trump be barred from ever holding office again under the 14th amendment – something which the Supreme Court itself threw out – is the kind of document that future historians will regard as a black mark on the legislative body: nothing but a moral panic in Congressional letterhead.
Which should surprise no one, considering that there was not one pro-Trump Republican on the committee, due to how obvious its purpose was, and how preordained its conclusions were. And, along with disqualifying and smearing Trump himself, it also clearly was intended to give liberals and swamp Republicans-in-name-only (RINOs) an excuse to harass and intimidate anyone who supported President Trump with the force of the law. Steve Bannon refused to be harassed or intimidated, which led to him being declared in “contempt of Congress” for refusing to testify - and on grounds of executive privilege. He is now enduring four months in prison for this “offense,” despite the fact that executive privilege has rarely, if ever, been prosecuted before now. In fact, it shatters a 250-year tradition of honoring executive privilege.
Still, God bless Bannon, because even now, he’s not backing down. “I don’t give two f**ks about going to Danbury prison, okay?!” Bannon roared, when discussing it with me on his pre-imprisonment show. “Here’s what I give a f**k about: we’re gonna take down Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, and the corrupt DOJ, and the FBI, and all of it. I could care less, okay? I’m excited, ‘cause MAGA’s gonna let out a roar tonight and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and burn, burn it all down til we get to November 5th, where President Trump’s gonna win in a landslide.”
Which brings me to the one bit of good news in an otherwise sickening spectacle of politicized “justice”: namely, that what this shows is that the Left is terrified of Steve Bannon. Yes, just as the point of the January 6th committee was obvious, too, is the purpose of Bannon being sent to the gulags. It’s so obvious, in fact, that the Left literally can’t stop their dumbest members from admitting it. To quote Barbara McQuade, former Obama-era United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and living proof that censors are always mediocre: “We’ll hear more of the same from Steve Bannon, but then he’s gonna be locked up for 4 months, where he’ll be unable to do his War Room podcast. And perhaps that will be the greatest service to Democracy that we see from this prosecution.”
The context for this astounding admission from McQuade is her belief that Bannon “repeating” complaints about the 2020 election was enough to make Americans believe it. Yes, she really thinks just saying the same thing over and over again was enough to persuade voters, because people like her believe engaging with the arguments involved is beneath them. No, in their minds, the election was self-evidently fine, and you only believe it wasn’t because you’ve been hearing people say it wasn’t repeatedly and are barking like trained seals. They think you’re too stupid to assess the evidence yourself, and they definitely don’t want someone like Steve Bannon making you think otherwise. It takes real chutzpah to pair this kind of implicit contempt for the people with a rhetorical defense of “democracy,” but hey, no one said the Democrats were coherent.
Nor, in fact, is their little ploy to silence Bannon going to work, and for a very simple reason: It doesn’t matter if you take Steve Bannon down. Or me. Or anyone else. There are too many of us, and our people are ascendant. When you tear a man’s tongue out, all that means is that you’re showing the rest of the world you’re terrified of what he has to say. Which is why you have lawmakers already lining up to defend Bannon, including Trump Veep contender JD Vance:
Vance is no fool. He knows where the country is going. He also knows that if the Republican party is to have a future, it must start with acknowledging that our rapidly deteriorating government, which becomes more third world-esque by the day, no longer has the unquestioned right to declare dissidents outside the bounds of polite discourse with trumped-up prosecutions. Steve Bannon is merely the most absurd example of that illiberal tendency to exist so far, though I imagine that without the Supreme Court, we might have been confronted with the spectacle of Judge Juan Merchan trying to do the same thing to Trump himself. Thank God that such a thing has been postponed, at least for now.
But while Steve Bannon’s return to public life might be postponed, the reckoning he has helped create has not. In four months, Steve Bannon will be out of jail, just in time to see Donald J. Trump win an election that will sweep away the remains of the desiccated globalist establishment who locked Bannon up to begin with. I understand the urge that many must feel to save Bannon, knowing this, but I also have to warn you: don’t waste your time writing letters on Bannon’s behalf. He’ll be fine. Write letters to your friends, your neighbors, and your family instead. It’s time to get to work. We have a country to save.
