Was I the only one who watched that video and thought “Weird - that’s like seeing Lex Luthor with hair.”
Steve Bannon is planning to run for president.
Why does this not surprise me in the least?
What’s sorta interesting is all this talk of folks (Bannon and others) positioning themselves to adopt the MAGA mantle as the MAGA party candidate in 2028 can certainly be seen as disloyalty to trump. You know, the Eternal Leader who knows he will never die. And who expects any election in 2028 to anoint him again, or simply to effectively not happen. There will be an an electoral charade, but the outcome will be controlled. Or so trump thinks.
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence.
Good point. Substitute “trump believes”. 
Trump verbalizes his delusions.
Now I’m reminded of a telegram that Göring sent to Hitler in April 1945, suggesting that since the Führer was essentially trapped in Berlin and had lost “freedom of action,” he (Göring), as deputy and designated successor, should take over. Which was perfectly legal and in line with the 1941 decree which made Göring Hitler’s second in command, but Hitler — prompted by Goebbels and Bormann — accused Göring of high treason and stripped him of all his offices. If he’d been Trump, the walls of the Führerbunker would have been dripping ketchup as well.
I don’t see this ending well for Bannon.
It sounds like Bannon’s plan was thus;
- Beat the drum incessantly about how Trump deserves a third term and we have to do everything to make that happen
- Reality catches up to Trump and it becomes evident that he’s not getting one
- Convince Trump that he did more than anyone else to fight for him and he deserves to be his successor and have his endorsement
I agree, but I’m not so sure it would be seen as disloyalty to Trump. Some would see it that way, of course, but others would see it as a “passing of the torch” to keep MAGA alive. And that’s the problem. I don’t think that Bannon or Vance have the charisma necessary to keep MAGA going. At least, not it its current form.
Trump is lacking many things, but one thing he has in abundance is charisma. Being able to attract the rabid support of a third of the country based on nothing more than personality and “telling it like it is,” in a way that his fans want to hear, requires charisma; and indeed, chutzpah. Neither Bannon nor Vance have that kind of charisma, and I doubt they have the chutzpah to try.
One other thing about Trump is that he merchandises the hell out of his brand. He has a brand after all. Yes, he’s failed at a lot of things, but his name is still on plenty of buildings, and we’ve seen NFTs, cryptocurrency efforts, a Trump watch, a Trump smartphone … The list goes on.
But Bannon and Vance don’t have brands to build their name on, much less to merchandise anything using that brand. A Bannon watch? A Vance smartphone? Would any MAGA want those? Trump-branded stuff, sure, but the stuff from two brandless and charisma-less guys? I don’t think so.
A “RUMP” watch!
A Vance couch?
My point was only that trump would see it as disloyalty to trump. Which invites his retaliation. Who much cares whether anyone else sees it as disloyal?
As to the rest of your post, I fuily agree that Bannon & Vance are charisma challenged and unlikely MAGA successor leaders. But Bannon does cruelly unhinged pretty well. Or is that unhingedly cruel? Either way, that’s chocolate-covered cocaine to MAGAts. They lurve that shit.
OTOH, politics in 2026 - 2029 will be largely AI & bot driven. Everything we think we know about politics will be inapplicable.
People keep saying this, and I don’t get it. Charisma? He can’t speak, he makes no sense. And is frankly an idiot.
He’s a slimeball that you can see coming from a hundred yards away.
Obama has charisma. He can speak. He makes sense. He captures an audiance. Trump just enrages and incites them with lies. That is not charisma.
I’ll go to my grave wondering.
People forget that Trump has been building his own myth and character for his entire life. The tough, brilliant, rich tycoon. He’s a parasocial relationship and wish fulfillment for many people.
I mean, it’s a weird sort of charisma. Obviously it doesn’t work on everyone, and in fact has the exact opposite effect on some of us. But on the people it does work on, it works amazingly well. How? I have no idea. But the evidence is incontrovertible. You can’t get elected to the Presidency twice without powerful charisma.
In this case Charisma = Horseshit. I’m being nice.
Stupid people love the stupid flavor of charisma. Thoughtful people love the thoughtful flavor of charisma.
Half of America is stupider than the other half. This isn’t hard to understand.
“If you can’t dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.” The Orange Peril can’t do the first — at least, for anyone with the intelligence Og gave mayonnaise — but he does the second quite well for an appallingly large segment of the populace.