This is excellent news for John McCain

Multiple news outlets have decided that a highly incriminating Wall Street Journal story about Donald Trump’s disgusting friendship with Jeffrey Epstein has really turned the tide in favor of Donald Trump. I wonder what the surely independent and impartial sources for this information are?

But it may be instructive to look a little deeper at how each outlet arrived at this conclusion.

• The Times cited “Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House adviser to Mr. Trump and influential leader of the MAGA base,” who told the paper that “the Murdochs’ bizarre assault on the president galvanized his base” and that “we are united as Trump goes on offense — against the Murdochs, the courts and the deep state.” (The Murdoch family owns the Wall Street Journal.)
• The Washintgon Post cited “Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former adviser who hosts a daily talk show popular with Trump’s MAGA supporters,” who told the paper that “MAGA is now united, because they can see there’s a common enemy,” which he described as “the Deep State, with their media partners, led by Murdoch.”
• CNN cited a certain Steve Bannon, identifying him as a leader of the MAGA movement. “‘We are finally on offense,’ Bannon, Trump’s former aide and a leader of the MAGA movement, said via text message to CNN. ‘President Trump has had enough and is fighting back – against his real enemies.'”
• Politico cited and reprinted the quote that Bannon gave to the Washington Post.

The same assemblage of words, more or less, in the four most important outlets in town—not bad for a few minutes’ work! It seems like the real “story” here might be that Steve Bannon is easy to get a response from via text message.

But is he right? It’s probably too soon to say—as journalist and QAnon expert Will Sommer explained Friday on a Bulwark broadcast, the broader universe of American conspiracy theorists does not solely revolve around Donald Trump, even if a lot of them are right wingers who might affectionately consider Trump to be something like their National Conspiracy Dad. The alliance between Trump and podcasters like Joe Rogan, formed in the summer of 2024, might not be a permanent one; not every Rogan listener is a hardcore political partisan who takes cues from Steve Bannon, who by the way has a pretty clear vested interest in maintaining the viability of Donald Trump’s political career.

The truth apparently has many layers!

As is often the case, this isn’t getting duped, this is worse than that:

They didn't "fall for" anything. They had a story they wanted to write and Bannon was the best guy – a known liar and self described propagandist! – they could find to give them a quote to write it. Don't print lies in the newspaper

[image or embed]— mtsw (@mtsw.bsky.social) Jul 21, 2025 at 8:20 PM