In the MAGA Movement, You’re Either a Predator or a Mark.

With the indictment and arrest of Steve Bannon yesterday, yet another individual in the Donald Trump orbit has demonstrated that the entire agenda of Trump and those close to him is little more that a big con-game, the biggest con-job being convincing working class whites that Trump gives a rats ass about them.  I continue to be amazed how those apparently motivated by racial resentment and perceived loss of white privilege allowed themselves to be so thoroughly played for fools.  A review of Trump's life reveals that he's only cared about one person, himself.  Even his wives and children seemingly matter to him only to the extent they reflect positively on him. Joe Biden's address to the Democrat convention last night showed what true compassion and concern for others looks like and it's something absent from Trump's entire lifetime.  Ditto for his henchmen and sycophants who see the world as an opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of others. A column in the New York Times looks at this sad reality.  Here are excerpts:

In the most recent Senate Intelligence report on Russian campaign interference, a footnote quotes Steve Bannon, the former chief executive of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, disparaging Trump’s oldest son. Bannon said he thought “very highly” of Donald Trump Jr., but also called him “a guy who believes everything on Breitbart is true.”

Bannon, of course, ran Breitbart, the far-right media outlet, before joining the Trump campaign, and then for several months after leaving the White House. Yet he seemed to want the senators to know that he was never enough of a rube to take his own propaganda seriously.

[F]ew people had more disdain for the members of the right-wing grass roots — whom Bannon sometimes referred to as “hobbits.”

In “The Brink,” a 2019 documentary about Bannon, there’s a scene in which he speaks to supporters in a modest living room stuffed with furniture and bedecked with crosses. As his small audience sits rapt, he lauds the room’s similarity to one in his grandmother’s house and pays homage to the “working class, middle class” people who make up nationalist movements everywhere.

Then he and a young man traveling with him walk out and step into their chauffeured car. “You couldn’t pay me a million dollars a year to live in that house,” sneers Bannon’s associate. They head to a private airport. Bannon starts to make a crack about the luxurious locale: “This is the populist …” Then he thinks better of it and shoves some popcorn into his mouth.

So it’s fitting that when Bannon on Thursday became the most recent member of Trump’s 2016 campaign staff to be arrested, it was on charges of defrauding gullible Trump supporters.

According to a federal indictment, Bannon, along with his associates Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea, ran a crowdfunding campaign, We Build the Wall, ostensibly to help fund Trump’s promised southern border barrier. The project became, said prosecutors, a source of illicit personal enrichment.

According to the indictment, Bannon used a separate nonprofit to siphon off over $1 million, some of which was used to pay Kolfage, who also received money through a shell company set up by Shea.

On Thursday, Trump tried to distance himself from Bannon and We Build the Wall, first saying he knew nothing about the group, then contradicting himself and saying he disliked it. But lots of Trumpworld figures have been involved with We Build the Wall.

Kris Kobach, a hard-line anti-immigrant Kansas politician close to Trump, is listed as the group’s general counsel, and last year told The New York Times it had the president’s blessing. Also on the advisory board is the Blackwater founder and close Trump ally Erik Prince; Curt Schilling, the ex-Red Sox pitcher Trump encouraged to run for Congress; and Robert Spalding, former senior director for strategic planning on Trump’s National Security Council.

Donald Trump Jr. praised We Build the Wall at a 2019 event for the group: “This is private enterprise at its finest. Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else, and what you guys are doing is pretty amazing.”

Bannon’s arrest comes just two weeks after New York’s attorney general sought to dissolve the National Rifle Association, claiming that its leadership “looted” it.

On Thursday, Politico reported that Jerry Falwell Jr., recently suspended as president of Liberty University, has “repeatedly used a 164-foot yacht owned by NASCAR mogul Rick Hendrick for family vacations after the university committed to a lucrative sponsorship deal with Hendrick Motorsports.”

Bannon himself was apprehended on a yacht belonging to the Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui; The Wall Street Journal reported that a media company the two men are involved with is being investigated by federal and state authorities.

The social philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote that in America, every mass movement “ends up as a racket, a cult or a corporation.” Trumpism reversed this. The racket came first.

The question becomes whether working class and non-college educated whites will again allow themselves to be played for fools.