When Steve Bannon came on the scene in 2015 the media presented him as some kind of genius. I immediately detested him, but was wary of what kind of bullshit he might pull. You may remember that one of his first projects was getting the voter lists from every state, and Kris Kobach (how’s that name for a blast from the past?) was tasked with getting that information from every state’s secretary of state.

You may also remember that it was a colossal failure:  44 state SOS, along with the DC SOS, refused to comply. And they were openly angry about it—this was my favorite response:

Mississippi’s Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, also a Republican, took the criticism a step further.

“My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” Hosemann said in a statement Friday. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”

I have to tell you that I was actually kind of frightened when that plan was announced, and that I honestly was surprised that so many Republican secretaries of state refused to surrender the information. I don’t think that it would play out the same in 2023. It also showed early on that Bannon wasn’t the genius he thought he was.

Fast forward to 2023 and his husbanding of RFKJR as a potential primary challenger. Our Fearless Leader wrote a RFKJR primer, and you can read it here. As you would expect, RFKJR got very little traction in both the mainstream media and liberal publications and social media because he’s an anti-vaxx zealot. FOX and the right wing universe filled the black hole of stupid, and RFKJR became a right wing darling.

You can see the problem (for the GOP), right? FOX’s audience started to love him, and he began to reveal more and more of his right wing beliefs. The GOP had managed to buy a Trojan Horse and then send it to their own city gates.

Personally I enjoyed watching the whole farce because I knew that it was going to backfire. For the most part, non-Trumpers prefer facts over fantasies that make them feel good. We’re adults. We can face the hard truths. But RFKJR’s nonsense was mother’s milk to MAGALand, and on Tuesday we got to see some proof:

Welcome to the resistance, Steve!

This seems appropriate: