Donald Trump's campaign is effectively declaring bankruptcy. How else to explain what's going on with a campaign that this week brought in Steve Bannon, head of the right-wing lunatic-fringe website Breitbart, as its chief executive?
Trump is doing what he's done four times in the past when his interests began to fail. This is just the the political version of Chapter 11. Trump doesn't want to liquidate the passionate followers he has amassed over this campaign. He just wants to reorganize the operation--perhaps by turning it into a right-wing media company--so he can squeeze more money out of it or leverage it into something profitable.
Don't believe me? Follow me down into the fever swamp that is Breitbart News Network, the unabashedly pro-Trump website run by the man now steering Trump's already bizarre and floundering campaign. It's as much a news site as I am a porcupine, but it is read--and taken seriously--by millions of online readers.
Originally created by conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart who died in 2012, the site has become little more than a conspiratorial echo chamber where aggrieved white men vent their rage.
Anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-Obama, anti-Hillary, sexist, racist, nationalist. You name it, Breitbart has it, spewed out with tabloid enthusiasm.
A few past headlines:
Take Down the Fascist, Anti-Christian Gay-Pride Flag.
Trannies Whine About Hilarious Bruce Jenner Billboard.
Big Gay Hate Machine Attempts to Take Over Congress.
In a July broadcast Bannon interviewed Joseph Schmitz, one of Trump's foreign policy advisers, and asked him if he thinks the Obama administration is using the Muslim Brotherhood to shape U.S. policy.
Schmitz responded: "No, I don't think it. I know it."
This is the work of the man Trump has now put in charge of his campaign. If that doesn't bother you, it sure as hell should.
Bannon has used Breitbart to foment anger and hatred for profit. And now he's guiding Trump, probably toward future media endeavors, with no concern for winning the election.
That's why Trump is campaigning in states he'll never win, like deep-blue Connecticut, and in states where he's already a lock to win, like deep-red Mississippi. It makes no practical sense. He's laying the groundwork to cash in post-election.
That's when it'll become clear his supporters were never more than junk bonds used to build his likely-to-fail presidential enterprise.
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Rex Huppke is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Editorial on 08/20/2016