Bannon's Campaign Rallies Are A Complete Bust... Everywhere

Looks like the Trumpist base isn't interested in Dr. Frankenstein any longer, now that his own monster has banished him. He released a delusional, manipulative video-- starring Corey Lewandowski, Hungarian Nazi, Sebastian Gorka and other #MAGAbomber types-- that has been largely ignored. This was his big screening for neo-fascist Michael Grimm fans (all 38 of them) on Staten Island earlier in the week:

The film employs the right-wing penchant for victimhood, specifically designed to make low IQ and opioid-addicted Trump fans feel like they are under siege by their imagined enemies. Bannon took his pathetic show on the road but has received the same non-reception everywhere. The "Red Tide Rising Rally" in the Buffalo suburb of Elma was widely publicized and Bannon said Trumpist Congressman Chris Collins-- currently out on bail after being arrested by the FBI on a pile of heavy-duty corruption charges-- and other far right Republican office-holders and candidates would be onstage with him at the suburban fire-house. No candidates or office-holders showed up, disappointing the 200 people who did turn out.

The Guardian reported that "in a move unlikely to please his former boss, Bannon spent the first part of his speech at the Jamison Road volunteer firehouse in Elma talking up his own importance in Trump’s 2016 victory, in an apparent attempt to thrust himself back into the national spotlight.

“Let’s go back in time,” Bannon said, in a potentially revealing turn of phrase.

“When I came into the campaign as CEO in mid-August [2016], we were down, what-- eight,10, 12, 16 points – double-digits down in every battleground state. Not a lot of money, not a lot of organization.”

There followed a Trump-style riff – a retelling of the obstacles and hardships the Trump campaign overcame to win a thrilling victory on 8 November.

The difference is that in Bannon’s version, he is very much front and centre, the power-- or, as Saturday Night Live portrayed him, the grim reaper-- behind Trump, whispering in the candidate’s ear, guiding him to victory.

Bannon, clad in familiar green Barbour jacket, grey hair swept back, recalled what he told Trump after signing on to the campaign.

“I said: ‘The numbers show that working class people in this country will unite around a leader who will return America to her former glory.

“‘This whole campaign is going to be compare and contrast. She [Hillary Clinton] is the representative of a corrupt elite, and you are the voice of the working people in this country.’

This recounting is unlikely to impress Trump, who claimed Bannon had “lost his mind” after leaving the White House, but then the president is probably not following his former guru as closely as he once did.

When Bannon left his job as Trump’s chief strategist in August 2017, reportedly after clashing with colleagues, he returned to Breitbart News, the organization Bannon had once declared “the platform for the alt-right.”

He could be “more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on” than in the White House, Bannon claimed, but the reunion proved to be short-lived. Bannon was booted from Breitbart in January of this year after saying Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with a Russian lawyer was “treasonous” in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. The volume prompted Trump to speculate about the state of Bannon’s mind and brand him “Sloppy Steve."

The debacle left Bannon with some catching up to do to regain relevance in conservative politics. Wednesday marked a beginning of sorts-- the former chief strategist drew a crowd of just 38 to an event in Staten Island, New York, on Monda-- but the Elma event had got off to an inauspicious start when the original venue cancelled, allegedly amid threats of violence.

Bannon had originally been slated to appear with David DiPietro, running for re-election to the New York state assembly, but after the first venue pulled out, so did DiPietro.

A couple of hours before the event, Michael Caputo-- conservative strategist, organizer of the Bannon event, and DiPietro’s campaign manager-- still thought DiPietro might actually turn up. Caputo said he had invited all Republicans running for office in the western New York area, but had yet to receive a single reply.

“It might be no one,” Caputo said.

He was right. Even Chris Collins, the US congressman for New York’s 27th district who is running for re-election despite having been charged with federal securities fraud, stayed away.

...Bannon spoke for about 25 minutes, warning of the ills of the “marxist left” and eventually explicitly praising Trump on job numbers, the border, and Korea.

And as he drew to a close, the former hedge fund manager showed off the knack for appealing to the man in the street-- however disingenuous that appeal may be-- that brought him, and Trump, such success.

“If you gave me the choice between the first hundred people who showed up here at Jamison firehouse today, in a red ball cap, to govern the country, or the top hundred partners at Goldman Sachs, I would take these red ball caps every day,” Bannon said, to whoops and whistles from the crowd.

“Think about what the country would be if we took the first hundred of you and you made the decisions,” he said. “Well, that’s the closest we’ve got with Trump.”

Tonight, crazy right wing nut, Jeff Lukens, vice chairman of the Hillsborough County Republican Party, is hosting a dinner featuring Bannon. The county GOP was counting on the gala event to be their big Get Out The Vote fundraising bonanza and were selling tickets for $1,ooo per person. Well, not exactly selling... trying to sell. No one in Florida wants to have dinner with Sloppy Steve. So they cut the ticket prices in half and then in half again and finally to $50-- and no one bought any. Yesterday, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the big event is now FREEEEEEEEE and that a mysterious (unnamed) donor is covering the costs. The event is to commemorate the anniversary of Trump being "elected" president.