by Rick Wilson
By late 2017 it was clear that Robert Mercer had reached his limits with Bannon, Breitbart, and the collection of trash people around its orbit. From deep-pocketed sugar daddy to “I barely know him” was a sign of just how far Bannon’s fortunes had fallen. It’s hard to imagine a sharper rebuke of Bannon than this from his former patron:
The press has also intimated that my politics marches in lockstep with Steve Bannon’s. I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon’s.
For personal reasons, I have also decided to sell my stake in Breitbart News to my daughter.
“Advertisers have rapidly and steadily fled Breitbart News this year as the site’s reputation is increasingly tied to the alt-right. So far, more than 2,500 companies have jumped ship,” said the Sleeping Giants team.27 It wasn’t about left and right. It was about markets in action. As MediaRadar reported, “Six months ago, Breitbart was riding the wave of the election, plotting an international expansion to provide a platform to spread far-right, populist views in Europe. But today, Breitbart is facing traffic declines, advertiser blacklists, campaigns for marketers to steer clear and even a petition within Amazon for it to stop providing ad services.”28
Isn’t capitalism grand?
Facebook changed its algorithm in the spring of 2018 to reduce the prevalence of fake news sites driving clickbait edge-case lunacy. You’ll be shocked to learn Breitbart’s traffic numbers took a sharp dive when Facebook upped their quality filter.
The curse touched the edge-case “reporters” who kept pushing the brand deeper into the weeds. We’ll cover Milo Yiannopoulos in a separate section. Katie McHugh, a vicious little racist even by Breitbart’s standards, was an overt alt-righter who was fired after a series of tweets that were—and ride with me here—too racist for Breitbart.29
McHugh’s tweets have included: “There would be no deadly terror attacks in the U.K. if Muslims didn’t live there”; “The only way to strike a balance begtween vigilance, discrimination, (& terror) is to end Muslim immigration”; and “British settlers built the U.S.A. ‘Slaves’ built the country much as cows ‘built’ McDonald’s. Amateur . . .”
Lee Stranahan was forced out because he was too lunatic even for Breitbart and now is reduced to reporting for the Russian government propaganda agency Sputnik. At least he’s cut out the middleman.
Pudgy virgin Matt Boyle, the site’s lead political reporter, is an unkempt little beachball, full of fury at the Establishment, unalloyed praise for Donald Trump, and endless Tinder rejections. He thought he’d end up as Breitbart’s Ben Bradlee but is increasingly marginalized in the wave of mainstream reporting that truly gets inside the doings of the Trump White House.
I’m sure you can hear the sound of my tiny violin playing right now as I close this section, because if there was a single alt-right, pro-Trump media outlet that went all-in and expected to change the game of conservative media, it was Breitbart. It was the bet of all bets, and Bannon’s leadership there ensured they were permanently bound to the rising and falling fortunes of Donald Trump. In late March 2018, the online metrics firm ComScore reported that Breitbart’s traffic numbers had fallen as sharply as their advertising revenue.
Between January 2017 and January 2018, Breitbart’s traffic dropped 51%, from 240th to 273rd of U.S. websites.30 Engagement of Breitbart’s traffic on Facebook and other social media platforms vanished. If there’s one media ETTD story that shows the entire arc of how dangerous tying one’s fortunes to Trump can be, it’s the Breitbart story.
RISING TRUMP STARS, CRASHING TO EARTH
As the age of Trump dawned, a cluster of rising new-right, alt-right, and Trump-right media stars blossomed. Just as Trump and his followers believed they represented a new era in politics, these folks believed they were the future of conservative journalism. Their contempt for actual conservative ideas and policy was vivid; they saw themselves as part of the new, hot nationalist wave. This list is by no means complete, but represents a few of the more prominent and colorful types who presumed they were destined for Trump era greatness . . . until the curse hit.
Milo
What can be said of Milo Yiannopoulos that won’t feed the singularity of ego need and attention-seeking that defines his entire character? A narcissist who rivals even Donald Trump, he was in some ways the perfect monster at the perfect moment. As one of the satellites orbiting Trump’s world, Milo looked as if he was about to become a media star for the Trump era. He was one of the cool kids of the alt-right: blond, flamboyant, provocative. Milo was just the kind of pretty provocateur Bannon wanted to inflame the desires of his growing alt-right fan base.
He was fond of referring to Trump as “Daddy” and built a fan base off of his post-Gamergate move to Breitbart, where he produced a series of inflammatory juvenilia and alt-right agitprop. The arc of Milo’s career and popularity rose fast, with a national tour of college campuses, all in an effort to generate viral buzz over his liberal-triggering antics.
There was a moment when Milo was almost interesting, a kind of political stunt character, a comments-section troll made into a real boy, but then came the endless series of crashes. Karaoke in a bar full of white supremacists featuring Nazi salutes, a defense of pedophilia, and a botched book deal all hit Milo hard.
Then, during the height of Bannondammerung, Robert Mercer tossed Milo to the wolves at the same moment he was disposing of the disgraced White House advisor. Milo’s “Dangerous Faggot” tour of college campuses had been a provocation of the sort in which Bannon and Milo reveled. Campus riots were a part of their imagined culture war.
For his corporate sponsor, it wasn’t as appealing. Mercer’s public note was a slap across Milo’s sneering face:
Without individuals thinking for themselves, society as a whole will struggle to distinguish the signal of truth from the correlated noise of conformity. I supported Milo Yiannopoulos in the hope and expectation that his expression of views contrary to the social mainstream and his spotlighting of the hypocrisy of those who would close down free speech in the name of political correctness would promote the type of open debate and freedom of thought that is being throttled on many American college campuses today. But in my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate. I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him.31
Milo helped spread the alt-right’s poison into the American political system, but for him, it wasn’t ideological. Milo’s sole needs set is about Milo. His famewhoring over Trump tied neatly into the rise of the alt-right, and his flirtation with them was about associating his own brand with controversy rather than some ideological alignment. Milo’s love of the transgressive isn’t political; he’s drawn to the gleaming eye of the camera, not by something deeper or more meaningful.
His 15 minutes were firmly up even before the end of Trump’s first year in office. Abandoned by Mercer, dumped by Breitbart, his tours impossible without a sugar daddy to support them, he was left doing nothing but a cam show from his Miami home.
In a sad piece on the decline and decline of the former alt-right poster child, Tanya Gold of the Spectator quoted the fading star as saying:
“People love me everywhere. It was a tumultuous 2017 but everyone who put Trump in the White House got punished somehow. It’s what happens after elections.”
We speak again a few weeks ago. He has a new strategy, he says, because new media wants to destroy him: “We made a mistake handing over our distribution to people who want to exterminate us. Personalities like me are being strangled to death by Facebook and YouTube and Google and Twitter. I have millions of fans worldwide. But they can’t get my stuff.”32
Don’t weep for Milo, though; when I last s
potted him, he was hawking vitamins and the 30 Day Liver Cleanse on an Infowars webcast. Who says the universe doesn’t have a sense of humor?
Alex Jones
The dog’s breakfast of conspiracy-driven, industrial-scale kook media in Trump’s orbit has nothing on Alex Jones, the red-faced, hyperventilating host of the Infowars “network.” Jones makes Breitbart look as measured and considered as the New Yorker in William Shawn’s day.
Of course, in the Trump era, no conspiracy is complete without an appearance by Roger Stone. Clad sometimes in a black T-shirt and beret, Stone frequently appears on Infowars, looking like a member of the Gray Panthers’ Viagra Liberation Front and sounding as if he’s mainlining Red Bull, steroids, and the ghostly ectoplasm of Lyndon LaRouche. Stone and Jones are perhaps the most vocal promoters of the Deep State theory, in which America’s intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex, and other dark forces, including the Federal Reserve, the secret Zionist World Government, the dudes from Eyes Wide Shut, and the lizard people manipulate the economy, the media, the justice system, and the fluoride in your water.
Jones was an early, enthusiastic supporter of the oft-mentioned Pizzagate theory, in which Hillary Clinton is part of a global child kidnapping and cannibalism ring, and promoted the Seth Rich conspiracy. In both cases, Jones ran into a legal buzzsaw, hitting the skids in the spring of 2018. No longer allowed even in the farthest orbits of Trump world, he continued to support the president in his inimitably lunatic style. Like many other outlets on the fringes drawn into the political mix, Infowars started to run afoul of social media platforms.
As with neo-Nazis, at some point the private companies like YouTube and Facebook Jones used to spread his batshittery realized his brand is consumer poison. Fearing YouTube and others would demonetize his videos, Jones was in a box. Feed the monster, or save the cash flow? The surge from interviews with Trump helped normalize Infowars with the kook set, but after its peak in November 2016, Jones was back to his usual sweaty screamfest farrago of UFO theories, amateur demonology, lurid conspiracy talk about the Bilderbergers, the Illuminati, the Gray Aliens, fluoride, chemtrails, Bigfoot, Jade Helm, Agenda 21, and the fish people. (If you’re ever looking for the perfect video clip to explain him, just search “Alex Jones Fish People.” It’s worth it.)
Tomi Lahren
A moment, if I may, about Alt-Right Barbie Tomi Lahren. You’ve heard of her. Of course you’ve heard of her. She’s a nonstop presence in the lives and minds of Trump World. The subject of a thousand fanfic moments in the heads of pudge-gutted Trump trucker-hat-wearing MAGAites, Tomi rocks an Aryan teen-queen mane of blonde extensions, a bilious attitude, an acidic tongue, and a withered, blackened crust of a soul when it comes to anyone of the wrong race, religion, or national origin.
Tomi is young. Tomi is quite pretty-ish, in a kind of Middle America trashy-hot fake-Instagram-model way. She’s learned to read a teleprompter well and emotes the oppositional-defiant-disorder style of contemporary Trumpian Republicanism with a certain livid verve. Tomi understands the way to the Trump demo’s heart is pure, hot, constant hate.
Tomi and I appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on February 3, 2017. Even before the show, she seemed less confident than I would have expected for someone who at the time was a commentator for the new conservative One America News Network and a rising star in the Trump media firmament. (As an aside, OANN is a Dumpster fire of sparkly-eagle-animated, flag-wavin’ warnings about the Muslim-Mexican conspiracy to bring sharia-compliant illegal immigrants to America, and truly a brain-melting experience.)
She rolled into the show with a few well-prepared talking points about the then-frisky protests against the egregious Milo Yiannopoulos. They say live television shows who people really are, and that night, as Tomi lost the Trumpian narrative thread and started speaking from the heart, I saw the future of “conservative” media up close. She was Ann Coulter without the pungent smell of cat litter, Marlboro Reds, and despair.
Bill Maher asked Tomi a question that would have worked perfectly for her on Fox or OANN: “Two-thirds of Republicans agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against minorities. Do you agree with that?”
After a little prevarication, Tomi stuck her head in the proverbial noose: “As we sit here today, I do think that here is an element of racism against whites,” she whinged.
Given my low tolerance for bullshit, I wasn’t going to put up with it, and replied, “Since I’m a conservative, and not a Trump person, let me say this. That’s absurd. That’s fucking crazy.” The reaction across social media was not, to put it mildly, kind to Tomi.
She didn’t spend a lot of time at the after-party.
Tomi has a massive social media presence and a gig with Trump’s SuperPAC as its spokesbot and is in regular rotation on Fox. She is also an utterly spoiled little trashfire of a human being, and thus a perfect exemplar of Trump’s media enablers.
The following transcript was provided by Wikileaks in the Fall of 2024.
* * *
– INTERCEPT 5 –
TOP SECRET//SI//ORCON//NOFORN
MUELLER: Mr. President, thank you for sitting down with us today.
TRUMP: President? Am I President?
MUELLER: You are, sir.
TRUMP: I like television. I like to watch.
MUELLER: Mr. President, I’d like to begin by discussing the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with representatives of the Russian government. . . .
TRUMP: My name is Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump.
MUELLER: Very well. I’d like to discuss payments to your campaign chairman Paul Manafort by . . .
TRUMP: I’m an excellent driver. Wapner.
MUELLER: Let’s move on to . . .
TRUMP: I like lamp.
MUELLER: On the date of . . .
TRUMP: Stamina. Wall. MAGA. Incredible.
MUELLER: . . . June ninth, 2016, did you discuss . . .
TRUMP: Hey, you wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world? EEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH!
MUELLER: I’d like to discuss the Letter of Agreement you signed regarding Trump Tower Moscow in the summer of 2016 . . . Here’s the prospectus and an artist’s rendering of the tower.
TRUMP: What is this? A tower for ants?
[SOUND OF TABLE FLIPPING]
[[TRANSCRIPT ENDS]
14
* * *
TRUMP’S ISLAND OF MISFIT TOYS
DONALD TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION REFLECTS HIM perfectly. Corrupt, angry, dumb, weird, ignorant of the world, venal as hell, and totally over their heads. Americans were shocked by some of Trump’s early hires, then stunned as they were chewed up and spat out either by resignations or firings. It shouldn’t have shocked anyone that Trump ground people to dust in the White House.
Of course, Trump spins it differently; on March 6, 2018, days after firing Rex Tillerson, his secretary of state, via tweet (naturally), he protested, “The new Fake News narrative is that there is chaos in the White House. Wrong! People will always come & go, and I want strong dialogue before making a final decision. I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection). There is no Chaos, only great Energy!”1
I mentioned the Emerson Rule earlier, and in a lifetime of politics, I’ve seen that play out over and over again. Trump’s administration is no different.
As a younger man, fresh off the 1988 campaign trail, I had the honor to work as an appointee in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush. Our 41st president led by example, expecting all of his appointees, from Cabinet secretaries down to the lowest-level staffer, to reflect the values of patriotism, modesty, judgment, humanity, and service that had shaped his career. Moral examples work.
When I worked for Rudy Giuliani in New York’s City Hall, the team culture was a combination of two-fisted, hands-on management and The Sopranos. We were high-speed, balls-out all the time, filled with a sense of mission to restore and protec
t the greatest city in the world. We were also swaggering assholes, with a heyfuckthatfuckingguy attitude. (My God that was fun.)
Nixon’s paranoia and inferiority complex were ramified and reflected in his administration. Clinton’s lack of personal and professional discipline led to a talented but chaotic wreck of a White House. Obama’s technocrats, reflecting their boss almost perfectly, believed that if they could just set up the right regulatory nudges, paradise awaited.
Usually American presidents of both parties have had some virtuous streak in their character that allowed the Emerson rule to apply. No longer.
We’ve gone from the best and the brightest to the dumb and the dangerous in 50 short years. In the few weeks before I turned this in to my editors, the White House was firing people at a breakneck pace.
Bad hirings and opera buffa firings are a hallmark of Trump’s administration, and by the time you read this he will have fired, driven out, or caused over 50% of his staff to commit either real or metaphorical seppuku. The staggering turnover rate is the highest in modern history, rivaling only medieval royal courts in which advisors to mad kings were poisoned, stabbed, thrown into wells, immured inside walls, eaten by wolves, carried off by plague, or killed by highwaymen.2
In the history of American politics, no campaign and no administration can rival the sideshow cast of characters who compose Trump World. Instead of smart, dignified men and women striving to serve the nation in the People’s House, they more closely resemble a casting call for the set of Real Housewives of Vulgaria. Team Trump is the dross in the American political melting pot, combining raging crony capitalism, conflicts of interest, ideological dead ends, industrial-scale ass-kissing, and the worst instincts and beliefs scraped from the darkest corners of our national shame closet.
