There may be nobody — perhaps not even Donald Trump himself — who embodies the degeneracy of what used to be called conservatism like Stephen K. Bannon. That the “War Room” host still exerts influence over the American and international right as a media personality, political strategist and power broker indicates just how empty of moral character that movement truly is.
Like dear leader Trump, Bannon owes his prominence and prosperity to a pervasive atmosphere of impunity. Every day, in an era of burgeoning scandal on every front, both of them test its limits — and have yet to find any at all.
Joe Conason
What the Epstein files have lately revealed about Bannon, however, as disclosed in hundreds of emails between him and the predatory financier, is so depraved as to be almost unbelievable. In the face of these damning documents, the former Trump campaign manager has offered mutterings and excuses that scarcely even amount to a denial.
Not only did Bannon begin to execute a costly “op” with Jeffrey Epstein to rehabilitate the latter’s image — which ended only with his arrest by federal authorities in 2019 — but they conspired politically together on various subsidiary plans both in the U.S. and Europe. Desperate for Bannon’s help, Epstein financed his travel and connected him with potentates and politicians around the world. He paid Bannon hundreds of thousands of dollars to tape a dozen or more hours of “documentary” interviews that were evidently meant as media training, in anticipation of Epstein’s prosecution.
All absolutely damning when assessed in the context of Epstein’s vile assaults on girls and women, as well as his apparent financial crimes. Yet what seems most appalling so far, and most illustrative of the enveloping corruption, was their joint plotting against Pope Francis, whose liberal gestures toward gays and lesbians, migrants, Muslims and the global poor had enraged the self-styled “traditionalists” of the Catholic Church.
Together Bannon and Epstein aimed to produce a documentary film exposing the culture of hypocrisy and concealment surrounding homosexuality in the church, based on a 2019 French book “In the Closet of the Vatican.” Bannon met with the book’s author several times in Paris, where he also met Epstein, who had an apartment there.
With Epstein as the executive producer, Bannon predicted that the movie would wreak cataclysmic damage on the papacy and his other political adversaries, from Beijing and Brussels to Chappaqua. “Will take down Francis. The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU — come on brother,” he wrote, encouraging Epstein (who would soon be dead).
Stop and ponder for a moment what Bannon was attempting to engineer. He wanted to produce a movie, with the help of a monstrous pedophile who had victimized hundreds of children, which would destroy the reputation of the Holy Father and perhaps many others equally without blame. And aside from the political benefit to his hard-right allies, Bannon no doubt hoped to bank a substantial profit.
It isn’t easy to imagine a more sinister project. By comparison, Bannon’s swindling of the suckers who financed his “We Build the Wall” nonprofit and his phony indictment of the humanitarian Clinton Foundation look quaint.
Now a few of Bannon’s longtime enemies in the MAGA movement — including Elon Musk and Roger Stone, rather dismal characters in their own right — have leaped to attack him over these reports. Presumably Musk would like to distract attention from his own cameo role in the files, including his solicitation of an invite to “the wildest party” on Epstein’s Caribbean island. And the scorpion-like Stone is merely stepping on a perceived rival, as he always does.
Yet there are many self-proclaimed Catholics and Christians in Trump’s orbit, MAGA influencers and conservative pundits who should have something to say about these appalling revelations. Why have we not heard from JD Vance, vice president of the United States, a fairly recent Catholic convert and a MAGA nationalist like Bannon, who spends so much of his time blathering on social media? Why haven’t we heard from Peter Thiel, the ultra-right gay billionaire and Epstein buddy who lectures about the “Antichrist” among “woke Democrats”?
Indeed, very few of our moral arbiters on the right have felt moved to speak up about Bannon — just as they remained silent when his coconspirators in the “wall” scam served prison terms, while he skated with a presidential pardon.
The most apt summation of this MAGA mountebank appears in a video recently released among the Epstein files, which was shot for that aborted documentary.
Bannon asks Epstein, “Do you think you’re the devil himself?”
“No,” Epstein retorts. “But I do have a good mirror.”
To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
