From "Inside the Hive": How Steve Bannon's Prison Sentence Could Help Trump Win

This episode explores Steve Bannon's prison sentence for contempt of Congress and its potential impact on the MAGA movement and Trump's political strategy.

1. Steve Bannon's prison sentence is seen as a badge of honor within the MAGA community, enhancing his clout.
2. Bannon's podcast "War Room" plays a critical role in shaping and mobilizing the MAGA movement's base.
3. His legal troubles and defiant stance against the judiciary are likely to energize his followers and could influence the upcoming election.
4. The episode discusses the potential continuity of Bannon's influence through his network, even while he is incarcerated.
5. Bannon's situation is portrayed as part of a broader strategy to delegitimize governmental institutions, echoing past tactics used by the Trump administration.

1. The War Room and Political Influence

This chapter discusses Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, which has become a hub for far-right activism and narrative shaping. Isaac Arnsdorf: "Bannon turned the precinct strategy into an action plan, rooting out uncooperative Republicans."

2. Bannon Behind Bars

Exploration of what Bannon’s imprisonment means for his podcast and the broader MAGA movement. Tina Nguyen: "He's cultivated a network that will keep the War Room vibrant."

3. The Bigger Picture

This section delves into the implications of Bannon’s strategies and rhetoric on American politics and the judicial system. Bryan Stalter: "They say fake news, fake election, now fake courts."

1. Stay informed about political narratives and their origins.
2. Critically evaluate media sources for bias and manipulation tactics.
3. Engage in community discussions to foster a broader understanding of political impacts.
4. Support transparency and accountability in political processes.
5. Educate others about the importance of respecting judicial outcomes.

With the New Yorker office closed for the July 4th holiday, The Political Scene brings you a recent episode from Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive,” hosted by the special correspondent Brian Stelter. Tina Nguyen, a national correspondent for Puck, and the Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf, a national political reporter, join Stelter to discuss how Steve Bannon helped rehabilitate Donald Trump among Republicans after January 6th. Bannon’s popular “War Room” podcast has been galvanizing the far right at the local and national level, and his four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress could actually burnish his bona fides with the base. “It’s amazing clout,” Nyugen says of Bannon’s prison sentence, “for someone in the MAGA world, in these MAGA times, with a MAGA audience.”

People

Steve Bannon, Isaac Arnsdorf, Tina Nguyen, Bryan Stalter

Companies

Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Puck News

Books

"The MAGA Diaries" by Tina Nguyen, "Finish What We Started" by Isaac Arnsdorf

Guest Name(s):

Isaac Arnsdorf, Tina Nguyen

Content Warnings:

None

Tyler
Hey, political scene listeners, it's Tyler.

Steve Bannon reported to prison this week. Nearly two years ago, he was convicted for contempt of Congress after refusing to cooperate with the January 6 committee.

Not too long ago, our friends over at inside the hive from Vanity Fair did a deep dive on Bannon, from his ongoing legal troubles to the war room, his influential far right podcast.

Make sure to follow inside the hive wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great 4 July, and I hope you enjoyed the show.

Bryan Stalter
Isaac, can you just remind us why Steve Bannon is about to go to prison?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, this was for essentially blowing off the subpoena from the House committee investigating January 6. They were requesting documents and testimony from him, and there were some other witnesses who went in and took the fifth, but he just didn't respond at all. And so they referred that to the Department of Justice. He was prosecuted and convicted. The judge stayed that sentence to give him the opportunity to appeal. And he finally lost that appeal. And so the judge said it's time to report to prison.

Bryan Stalter
That is Isaac Arnsdorf, national political reporter for the Washington Post. His new book, finish what we started, is all about the MAGA movement since January 6, and he interviewed Bannon for the book. And I'm Bryan Stalter. Welcome to Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair.

This week, we're going inside what Steve Bannon calls the war room. It's his podcast where he rallies the Trump faithful and plots revenge against perceived enemies. I think it's important to know what's being said there. All the extremists talk about retribution and accountability, since Bannon used to be an actual White House advisor and now he has a lot of sway on the outside.

But soon he will be behind bars. So what's it going to mean for the war room and for the election?

To answer that, I'm also joined by Tina Nguyen, a Vanity Fair alum, now a national correspondent and resident MAGA expert at Puck News. Her memoir, the MAGA Diaries, is another outstanding read. So thank you both for getting together with me. Dina, I wanted to start with this prison sentence because Bennett's claiming that he's a patriot and he's going to prison as an act of patriotism. He says he's serving his country. He's trying to turn this into a positive for him. But this is about contempt of Congress. He was trying to keep secrets relating to January 6.

Tina Nguyen
I mean, yes, but you have to put on your MAGA mind reading hat for a second and try to get into the psychology of the audience that Bannon's talking to the audience that he's been cultivating for years. At this point in the era of Trump, who was viewed by his audience as a martyr, as a true patriot, who was constantly, consistently being persecuted by members of the so called deep state, think of all of the congressional investigations into Trump's behavior, the Mueller investigation, what have you, who's also being investigated in his post presidency, part one by the DOJ, by the Manhattan courts, by all of these courts that you could possibly think of. But as an ally and like attendant orbiter around Donald Trump, to go to prison under the same reasoning and circumstances as Trump. It's amazing clout for someone in MAGA world, in these MAGA times with a MAGA audience, but that's the context in which he's saying these words.

Bryan Stalter
Going to prison is clout.

What a great, wild way to put it. Yes, no, I appreciate the MAGA mind reading hat we need it. That's what I want to get inside here.

Isaac, can you take us back a little bit and tell us why Bannon has been relevant, why he mattered, and why he matters now?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, we should maybe point out this isn't Bannon's first brush with the law. Right. He was charged in 2020 with basically ripping off small donors in a scheme to allegedly build the wall on behalf of Trump. But really, Bannon and his friends were accused of spending the money on themselves. And then one of the last things that Trump did was pardon Bannon.

And so that all contributed to kind of his cred in the movement going out of Trump's presidency and setting up this moment where, if you remember, early 2021, after January 6, Trump kind of disappeared for a while. He was kind of in political hibernation. And it was not at all clear that his primacy in the party would remain and that we would get back to this place where he's the nominee again. And Bannon was a huge part in making that happen, kind of stepping into that power voice and making himself an indispensable voice of the movement and helping Trump's supporters process what had just happened on January 6. And Bannon helped shape that, an understanding of why they lost and what they needed to do about it to make a comeback, to be clear.

Bryan Stalter
You mean rewriting what happened on January 6, reframing it. Right. Creating an alternative reality about the attack.

Isaac Arnsdorf
Yes, exactly. And that rewriting was really something that the grassroots led and Trump followed. I mean, it paved the way for Trump to have this political comeback by making it acceptable for him to return before he started mounting that political operation and the story that the sort of canonization of the stolen election myth that Bannon helped develop Washington, that it was Republicans who were responsible for that defeat. And you know, that's not totally off, right? If you think about the soft spots and the key moments where Trump failed to keep himself in power, it was actually because of a handful of uncooperative Republicans. And so the way that Bannon turned that into an action plan was through an idea called the precinct strategy, which was basically that Trump supporters had to go in to the precincts, the bottom of the party organization, take it over and root out all of these Republicans who let Trump down when everything was on the line. And that's kind of a key to understanding the story of the last several years and how we've gotten to a place where Trump is not only the nominee again, but is the nominee of a party that is more unified and more disciplined behind him than ever before.

Bryan Stalter
Yes, yes, the system worked. But then Bannon and others said the system failed, the system was rigged, et cetera. And now we're back with Trump as the nominee again. Tina, is Bannon more powerful now than he was when he was in the White House? For people who don't remember, I know it's been a long time. Bannon was an official Trump advisor in the White House for the first few months of the Trump presidency. And ever since, he's been on the outside. But it feels to me like he may have more power, he may have more sway now than he did when he was actually officially inside the White House.

Tina Nguyen
Yeah, of course. Yeah. There are two different types of power you could have in a situation like this. Right? Like, one is directly influencing Trump himself by being next to him, by having access to his inner circle. And then there's the other one where you shape the narrative around him and in the political environment, as Isaac was incredibly good at summarizing just now. And if Steve Bannon is able to set the tone and the talking points for the rest of the activist world, the MAGA movement, and the network of activists that he does have access to on a regular basis, sure. That's incredible power.

Bryan Stalter
Yeah. Look at what happened earlier this week when Bannon was hosting his podcast radio show. Call it whatever you want, he was interviewing Carrie Lake and he claimed to get a phone call from Trump. Here's the clip.

Steve Bannon
Hey, Kerry, hang on for 1 second. I got a call from someone I gotta take just to. Hang on.

Tina Nguyen
Okay.

Steve Bannon
Hey, mister president, I'm live on tv.

Isaac Arnsdorf
Can I call you back?

Steve Bannon
I'll call you back, sir. Thank you.

Kerry. Go ahead. Continue on your favorite person.

Bryan Stalter
Okay, so with the caveat that I don't trust anything Steve Bannon says, and I don't know for sure that that was Trump on the line.

Isaac. It is fathomable.

It is realistic, you know, that Bannon's in touch with Trump.

I wonder what your reporting indicates about that. But when I was recently updating my book, network of lies for the paperback, I realized that I called Bannon a former Trump advisor, and I decided that was inaccurate. I don't think it's right. He's not a former. He is a current. He still is a Trump advisor, right?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah. I mean, he's not officially on the campaign.

And so that's the distinction. You know, it's similar to the dynamic of earlier in 2016 before he officially took over the campaign and he was at Breitbart and, you know, he was kind of the media side of the Trump operation. And, and so that's kind of how it's worked. Again, I mean, my reporting is that he's in touch with Trump occasionally, not frequently. There are people on Trump's staff who are kind of intermediaries who are in touch with Bannon more frequently. But there's a kind of a dialogue that takes place both in public and in private between Bannon as this very prominent media outlet in the movement and Trump as the official side on the campaign. And, you know, there are benefits to that kind of informal relationship in terms of, you know, fires that Bannon can stoke without the liability of being formally affiliated.

Bryan Stalter
What are the benefits? What are the fires he's stoking?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, I mean, you know, Trump's language is very inflammatory on its own, but I think you get a situation where Bannon is able to message to the movement directly and is not scrutinized or held accountable for, for things that don't pan out to the same way he would be if he were actually Trump's campaign advisor. Right. So, like, there are a lot of things, there are a lot of things on war room that are a huge deal until they fizzle and disappear and are forgotten about. And, you know, those would be stories if they were in an official capacity. But, you know, a big challenge of covering Bannon is he talks a lot of smack and you don't always know when he's blowing smoke and when he's deadly serious, but it is those, that fraction of the time that you really do have to pay attention because it really does matter.

Bryan Stalter
Yeah. Tina, how do you react to that. How seriously do you take what Bannon says and does?

Tina Nguyen
It kind of goes back and forth. Like, it's easy to be someone who has a microphone bloviating on the outside, but it's all a matter of, like, who he's able to get to repeat his words, who is going to be going to him for approval, and what that person can be doing about it. Like, the thing that I keep remembering the most about Bannon's comeback is the fact that he operated his podcast, War Room, right next to Capitol Hill. And so, during, um, Speaker McCarthy's election and Speaker Johnson's ascension, the members who were opposing McCarthy were going back and forth from the hill to Bannon's office to be able to, like, spout their viewpoint for Bannon, to reinforce what they were doing. They basically had their own media outlet at that point to give them legitimacy.

Bryan Stalter
Right. So there is real power being exercised at times, but then, are there other times where he's exaggerating, overstating, going over his skis?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, I mean, the way that I've tried to come at it in my reporting is looking when the talk crosses over into action. And his track record of that is pretty strong. I mean, Tina was talking about his role in the ouster of Kevin McCarthy. I mean, I was with him when that vote finally happened, and he was taking a call from Matt Gaetz in the middle of our interview.

That's having a real role. Um, and. And the other example is the precinct strategy. You know, like, it was one thing for him to talk about this on the podcast, but, you know, I knew it was really a story when I was calling around to local party officials and asking them, like, is this something that was actually happening? Are people actually showing up and coming out of the woodwork and signing up to be these low level party functionaries who no one's ever heard of? And the answer was yes. Everywhere, all the time, in numbers like they'd never seen before. So, you know, he's very focused on, um, you know, what he describes as action and empowerment and agency. Um, and that's really what sets his show apart from any of the other maga. Cinematic universe shows. Uh, is that he is focused on channeling the audience into political action. And, you know, when that happens, that's powerful.

Bryan Stalter
Let's get into what war room is and what's going to happen when Bannon's behind bars. Quick break. More in a minute.

Nomi Fry
Do you remember when you got obsessed with an artwork? Like, really obsessed.

Alex Schwartz
When I was in college, I watched Kara Knightley's pride and Prejudice probably between 30 and 40 times. It was basically playing on a loop. I have no idea if it's a good movie or nothing, but I get it.

Nomi Fry
It hits this week on critics at large were talking about our summer obsessions and how we feel about them now years down the line. Plus, well hear from our listeners about their own obsessions.

Join me, Nomi Fry and my co hosts Alex Schwartz and Vincent Cunningham at the New Yorker. New episodes drop every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.

Bryan Stalter
And we're back on inside the Hive from Vanity Fair. I'm Brian Salter talking with Isaac Arnsdorf and Tina Nguyen.

TiNa, FoX News is the dominant right wing media operation out there, but Steve Bannon's war room has carved off a really kind of unique area.

Steve Bannon
We fight the american Gestapo, the FBI, you know, we fight the Justice Department. We're going to purge that and clean that out. People understand that this country, they get what's going on.

Bryan Stalter
They see it's somewhat independent. He broadcasts on YouTube and on streaming sites, and he distributes it via podcasts, et cetera. Tell us about what war room is, how many hours is he broadcasting and what kind of reach does he have.

Tina Nguyen
So war room is basically his live streaming fiefdom.

But I think what's smart about his reach, rather than, I would say, pretty much every other large manga personality that's tried to put their content out there is that he doesn't really care too much about money. And he kind of works on a schedule that is very uniquely his own. I think he was one of the first right wing media figures to truly understand the reach that one could have with a podcast like his. And basically, yeah, everywhere at this point. And it's been quite effective, he goes to where the audience is rather than, say, Fox or Tucker Carlson trying to draw the audience to them.

Bryan Stalter
Yeah. Isaac, in your book, you describe war room as a far right meet the Press quote, the go to interview for Trump world celebrities and aspiring candidates. And partly it's because he broadcasts so much. Right. He's on three or 4 hours on weekdays. He's on the weekends as well. Tell us what you learned when you listened closely to this show.

Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah, it's definitely like the, I mean, Tina was talking about the power that it kind of has to make someone in the movement. And I think a great example of that is Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the RNC who was not a MAGA darling before she was ousted. She was going on Steve Bannon's war room in the run up to the 2022 midterms. So, you know, if the literal chair of the party coming to him kind of shows you which way the validation was going. I do want to, like, not totally underestimate the money aspect, though. I mean, it's kind of actually amazing how much money there is because of how online advertising works that without actually any sponsors that you've ever heard of, just the way that digital advertising is kind of like a big slush that all gets fed in and spit back out. There's kind of actually a lot of money in these, these little ads that you're used to seeing at the bottom of the page for weird supplements and dubious weight loss treatments.

Bryan Stalter
Yeah, I liked how you use the word slush. That's a good way to portray it. You also mentioned in the book it started as war room impeachment. It was about the Trump impeachment. Then it became more room pandemic about the pandemic, always with a conspiratorial mindset behind this program, all sorts of far right conspiracy theories, and we don't exactly know how popular the show is, a standardized way to measure the success or the performance of something like war Room. But as you both have pointed out, we see the impacts on our politics. So I guess that's the way to measure the performance of the show. Tina, do we know what Bannon's going to do when he's behind bars? Do we know what's going to happen to the program?

Tina Nguyen
I currently don't know, but I would say that over the past several years, he's been able to cultivate a network of people who would be more than happy to step in and take control of the war room for a couple of guests around hosting stints, you'd have people who are almost as prominent in the movement but could use that step up, like Jack Pasobic, Raheem Kassam. I would say the turning point, people would be more than happy to step in every once in a while.

It's something you'd find analogous to mainstream media properties like, say, the Daily show, which hadn't found a permanent host before Jon Stewart came back, but for a while was able to keep itself afloat just by a group of hosts and taking control for a week. It kept the property afloat, it kept eyeballs on the site. And, you know, every once in a while, Steve Bannon can send an email from prison or something, being like, hello, it's me. I'm a patriot being persecuted.

Bryan Stalter
Here's a funny headline from Vanity Fair a few days ago. It says Bannon cites his podcast duties as a reason he should not be required to report to prison.

Specifically, his lawyers said in a court filing that millions of Americans are looking to him for information on campaign issues.

Of course, this is not going to sway the judge in the case, but Bannon has made noise about making sure the war room keeps going, stays vibrant. And Isaac Titina's point, there are lots of people that are going to be more than willing to fill in for the four months that he's likely to be behind bars.

Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah. And that is the plan, as far as I understand. But I think that anyone who's ever had a podcast or a tv show could tell you that actually the audience is coming for the reliability of the host.

So, you know, we'll see how it works. You know, he really is a singular figure.

Bryan Stalter
Yeah, you know, you're right. He is. And he illustrates how the GOP's political operation and its media operation are one and the same, how they have effectively merged.

So he's going to use this, of course, try to use this to his advantage. Here's what he said to Tucker Carlson the other day.

Steve Bannon
So in my twenties, I served my country on a Navy destroyer. In my seventies, I'll serve my country in a federal prison. It doesn't make any difference. It won't change my life.

Bryan Stalter
So it does seem like this prison time is inevitable. CNN recently reported that he might be going to a low security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. And we know that the deadline is July 1. He has to turn himself in by July 1.

Isaac, how do you size up the timing of this? Because Bannon said to Tucker, he said to other people that they're trying to take me off the playing field for the general election.

And I could see that argument really resonating with Trump fans.

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, it's also, as you know, and this is a coincidence, it wasn't planned this way, but it's gonna be ten days before Trump's own sentencing here. And there's something happening right now with the delegitimizing of the criminal justice system on the right, the same way that Trump and Bannon delegitimized the election system in 2020. And that is how Bannon and Trump are trying to portray this. And Bannon said in his speech over the weekend that they were the first wave on the beaches of Normandy and that everyone there in the audience was the future wave. So creating this idea in conjunction with how Trump talks about is they're not coming after me. They're coming after you, that somehow every single Trump supporter is in jeopardy of being prosecuted and incarcerated. And they are the edge of this wave. And that's, you know, I don't know totally what it means. I mean, you know, like, there's kind of a long american tradition of sort of glorifying the scofflaw and, you know, sticking it to the man. But there's also obviously a very dark edge to this, particularly in the context of validating and glorifying the criminality and the violence, specifically of January 6 and of trying to reject democratic outcomes.

Bryan Stalter
Yeah. The way I think about it is 2017. They said fake news. 2020, they said fake election. Now they say fake courts, fake judicial system.

And that does lead us down a dark path.

Let's take a quick break. Much more, Tina and Isaac in just a minute.

Vincent Cunningham
Politics has never been stranger or more online, which is why the politics team at WIRED is making a new show, Wired Politics lab. It's all about how to navigate the endless stream of news and information and what to look out for. Each week on the show, we'll dig into far right platforms, AI chat bots, influencer campaigns, and so much more. Wired Politics lab launches Thursday, April 11. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Bryan Stalter
Hey, you're enjoying the show, right? So please rate and review it wherever you listen. And don't forget to hit follow so you never miss an episode.

Hey, welcome back to Vanity Fair's Inside the Hive. I'm Brian Selter talking with Isaac Arnsdorf and Tina Nguyen, both reporters who cover the Maga movement, both authors who know all about this topic. So, Tina, Isaac mentioned Bannon's comments last weekend at turning point.

Steve Bannon
Ladies and gentlemen, it's very simple, victory or death.

Bryan Stalter
Tina, when he talks like this and his fans take him seriously, what does it mean for our politics?

Tina Nguyen
I don't know if it means anything really positive or good. I don't think they're about to all start singing 1776 the musical.

It sets the movement up for a situation where they feel ready to go over the brink for whatever cause they may deem worthy at the time, but certainly fueled by this bundle of grievances you mentioned earlier. You know, the news is fake. The elections are fake. The judicial system is fake. What else could be fake enough to push them over the edge? And who would actually, like, make that first move?

I don't know who that would be. I think it would be irresponsible to guess. But there is a situation, I think, here where Bannon would be happy to knock over the domino into civil war. And I think this is something that's been his.

Oh, God, that sounds really dramatic. If you want to dial that part back, by all means.

Bryan Stalter
But we're going to keep rolling. We're going to keep rolling.

Here's why. Here's why, Tina, when axios wanted to write about Trump's plans for revenge after he was convicted in the hush money case, who did Axios call? They called Steve Bannon. And what's the quote that Bannon gave to the publication? Of course, Alvin Bragg should be and will be jailed. Right? Bannon says out loud what a lot of other Trump allies only say in private or only fantasize about.

I mean, I think that's a fair statement. That's a fair statement. He says it out loud, we're going to jail our enemies.

Tina Nguyen
I mean, for sure it is sort of him posing himself as the screaming id of the MAGA movement.

The question is, like, exactly who in his audience is going to take that to its literal extreme? What are they going to do? And how will Bannon and the rest of the movement approach that? Like, will they go, oh, no, that's too embarrassing for us. Let's just pretend that never happened? Or will they go, yep, this is it. But let's do this thing, guys?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, I mean, first of all, I mean, Trump has been asked himself repeatedly about this question of if he's gonna prosecute his political opponents, if he gets back into the White House and has repeatedly passed on ruling that out. So talking about, is anyone else going to take it seriously? I mean, kind of. The one person who matters at least wants us to think that.

Bryan Stalter
Yes, that's a very good point. There's a quote from your book that really stands out to me. Again, the book titled finish what we started. Bannon told you he's not in the rebuilding business, he's in the tearing down business.

What's his end goal? What did he tell you?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Bannon is not one of these conventional political strategists who's trying to tinker around the edges of the party coalition to get to 50% plus one. He wants to completely redefine the political landscape in pursuit of a setup that he thinks would result in uninterrupted republican rule for Democrats decades or even a century.

And that is redefining the republican party as a right of center, really far right, populist, working class, nationalist party and then reducing the Democratic Party to a globalist, elite, left wing party. And if you set it up that way, he thinks that there are all these voters who are MAGA and don't know each other yet and would create a durable ruling majority for Republicans?

Bryan Stalter
That's an interesting phrase. Voters who are MAGA and don't know it yet. Is it supported by the data? Is it supported by the polling? Or are the reasons, are the reasons to believe he's right?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Well, kind of. Actually, there's this weird thing going on in this cycle where that, in contrast to the historical pattern in recent memory, wherever, where the less likely people were to vote, the more likely they were to lean democratic. There's this weird thing going on now where actually the more reliable voters are leaning democratic. That's why democrats have been performing well in special elections and low turnout races. And as you slide down what's called in the business propensity, as you go down to people who are less engaged and vote less frequently, they actually become Trumpier and Trumpier. So that really kind of scrambles the turnout models. It makes it very hard to predict this election.

But, you know, one way to look at that is support for Bannon's theory that, you know, that the country is actually way more maga than you think. The other way to look at it is like Trump and Bannon and the MAGA movement are a huge turnoff to a lot of moderates and independent independents who used to vote Republican and aren't going to do it anymore.

Bryan Stalter
Tina, how do you see this environment this year?

You've been on book tour for your book MAGA diaries. You talked about being inside that right wing echo chamber and then finding a way out. So that's the flip side of this. People that maybe were MAGA and maybe aren't anymore.

Tina Nguyen
From my own personal experience, I would say it was highly individual to my situation of being a journalist, realizing that, oh, my God, I'm a right wing journalist who's being asked to distort the truth. This is insane. Goodbye.

But the thing that I found universal about that story that I think applied to a lot of people or resonated with a lot of audience members was the idea that maybe there was a breaking point in their relationship to the MaGA movement or the policies of the MaGA movement that would deliberately isolate you from the rest of your social circle. Where you go, is this actually worth it?

Like, the big unknown for me is if someone is so deeply MAGA that they've isolated themselves from anyone who would say, wait, that's wrong. Do they find their way out of that, or do they just shut themselves in forever?

Bryan Stalter
As we wrap up here, talking about Bannon going to prison in the next couple of weeks, it's important to note he has other legal troubles. Isaac, you referred to this earlier, the state prosecutors in Manhattan accusing him of misusing money he helped raise for a group backing Trump's border wall. And that fraud trial is scheduled to take place pretty soon, isn't it?

Isaac Arnsdorf
Yeah. So he was already charged with this at the federal level and pardoned the other people involved, went on and I think pleaded guilty.

And he's now the state prosecutors are charging him since he got off on the federal charges.

They're alleging that there are state crimes at issue also. And so he's still on the hook for those.

Bryan Stalter
And he will be behind bars for at least some of the general election cycle. He recently said, quote, November 5 is judgment day. January 20, 2025 is accountability day.

That's the kind of language his fans love to hear, but that makes a lot of other people nervous.

Well, Isaac, thanks so much for joining us.

Isaac Arnsdorf
Thanks for having me, Brian.

Bryan Stalter
Tina, great talking with you. Thank you so much.

Tina Nguyen
Thanks again, Brian.

Bryan Stalter
This episode of Inside the Hive was produced by Gianna Palmer. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer. Chris Bannon is Conde Nast's head of global audio. We had engineering assistance from Jake Loomis and mixing by Bob Mallory.

And I'm Brian Stelter. You can email me your guest ideas, your feedback on the show anytime. I'm at b steltermail.com. you can find me on threads and x as well. And we'll be back in your podcast feed next week.

Alex Schwartz
I'm Alex Schwartz.

Nomi Fry
I'm nomi Frey.

Carrie Lake
I'm Vincent Cunningham. And this is critics at Large, a New Yorker podcast for the culturally curious.

Alex Schwartz
Each week we're going to talk about a big idea that's showing up across the cultural landscape, and we'll trace it through all the mediums we love, books, movies, television, music, art.

Nomi Fry
And I always want to talk about.

Tina Nguyen
Celebrity gossip, too, of course.

Nomi Fry
What are you guys excited to cover in the next few months?

Carrie Lake
There's a new translation of the Iliad that's coming out. Emily Wilson, really excited to see whether I can read the Iliad again, whether I'm that literate. I mean, the jury is out.

Alex Schwartz
I can't wait to hear Adam Driver go again in an italian accent in Michael Mann's Ferrari.

Nomi Fry
He can't stop.

Alex Schwartz
I mean, and bless him. I can't wait.

Nomi Fry
Molto bene.

Alex Schwartz
Molto bene.

Carrie Lake
We hope you'll join us for new episodes each Thursday. Follow critics at large today wherever you get podcasts.

Nomi Fry
You really don't want to miss this.

Carrie Lake
Don't.

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Nomi Fry
See you soon.

Isaac Arnsdorf
From Prxheendez.