Normally, the Steve Bannon Experience feels a bit like shooting psychedelic toad venom into your eyeballs while Randy Quaid’s vestigial twin reads random 8chan posts, but occasionally he says something that sounds vaguely true-ish.
It may be an accident. After all, a roomful of chimpanzees banging on typewriters could recreate all of Shakespeare’s works over trillions of years—or one teleprompter-ready Trump speech in about 15 minutes.
But Bannon did work in the Trump (mal)administration and knows him better than most, so it’s worth listening to what he says about Dear Leader. And on Thursday’s episode of Bannon’s show “The War Room,” he bluntly admitted that if elected, Trump would face enormous, unprecedented obstacles to running the country … like a dictator. Though he didn't say that last part out loud. But give it another few weeks and he’ll likely get around to it.
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Watch:
Transcript!
BANNON: “Folks, write this down. There is no law they won’t trample, there’s no trick they won’t pull, there’s nothing that they will not do on lawfare. That doesn’t even get to what they're doing on Big Tech, it does not even get to what they’re doing with the financial system, because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury is all in on this. You can see that, and that's why the inflation number yesterday shocked them.
Every part of the apparatus is focused on one thing, and that is the complete and total destruction of Donald J. Trump—so that even if he was to take the White House in November this year, that he would be too politically, financially and, quite frankly, physically and maybe even mentally hurt that he then couldn't effectively govern. They are so afraid of MAGA’s return to power that they are out in a full-scale operation to destroy the president of the United States, President Trump.”
That’s quite an admission there, Steve. Thanks for the heads-up.
Of course, we all knew that Trump’s ability to govern has long been severely compromised—but it has nothing to do with the alleged deep state. His incompetence was on lurid display for four years, and his latest speeches sound like Benito Mussolini trying to claw his way out of a wood chipper.
But it’s nevertheless notable when a true-believing MAGA soldier is this forthright about Trump’s prospects for effectively leading the country—even if, as Bannon weirdly claims, his failures would be the fault of the ubiquitous and nefarious deep state.
But the point Bannon appears to be making is that the deep state—which didn’t exist until MAGAs needed to explain why Trump couldn’t just boil migrants in vats of acid like they always assumed he would—will be so focused on destroying the dude with infinite stamina, you shouldn’t be altogether surprised if he eventually melts down into a humiliated puddle of spray-tan and trans fats.
Or maybe his rant is just a ploy to preemptively explain away this kind of shit:
Or this:
Or this:
Or this, for that matter:
I had an idea for a movie where Trump plays chess against Death to forestall his imminent demise and allow him to return to the White House, but I’m worried audiences won’t be able to tell them apart. Maybe Death could wear a Dark Brandon hat.
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But while Bannon’s febrile mulch-mind invents reasons why Trump would be permanently out to lunch in his second term—or trapped in an Arby’s like a drunk dude trying to puzzle his way out of an escape room—maybe he and the rest of MAGA world could take a hot minute to consider the possibility that Trump is a criminal and a fraud who’s finally getting his comeuppance. And that that’s why he suddenly finds himself in such deep shit.
Or it could be that rascally deep state again. Sure, why not? Let’s just go with that.
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