Originally posted on August 20, 2020

Earlier today Steve Bannon, the architect of Trump’s victorious 2016 campaign, was arrested. He is accused, along with 3 others, of siphoning money from a GoFundMe campaign that collected about $25M to build the wall with Mexico. When arrested he was on the superyacht of a Chinese fugitive billionaire, living the good life. Pretty strange for a man who purports to be a populist.

Of course, it could be that Bannon is a fraud, milking the populist teat for as much money as he can. His type does seem common in Trump’s orbit. He is now the seventh significant member of Trump’s campaign to face legal problems: Stone, Manafort, Flynn, Cohen, Gates, Papadopoulos all preceded him.

Biden’s campaign had a nice comment on the arrest: “No one needed a federal indictment to know that Steve Bannon was a fraud… Donald Trump has run the most corrupt administration in American history. He has consistently used his office to enrich himself, his family and his cronies. Is it really a surprise that another one of the grifters he’s surrounded himself with and placed in the highest levels of government was just indicted? Sadly, it is not. The American people deserve better.”