The Future's So Not Breitbart

(Image courtesy of The Onion)

     Perhaps it's a bit premature to piss on Breitbart.com's grave but we can certainly be forgiven for being tempted to make its funeral arrangements.

     Let's take stock: Last February, its star reporter Milo was forced out just after he diddled into oblivion a $250,000 publishing deal with Simon & Schuster's right wing imprint, Threshold. Before that, the "news" organization took a hit after it had failed to defend one of its female reporters after she was assaulted by top Trump aide Cory Lewandowski. Then Steven Bannon, to no one's surprise, got sucked into Trump's seductive orbit and rode his over-sized tie all the way to the White House.

     Since then, the plummet in Breitbart's fortunes seem to coincide with that of Trump (He of the 35% approval rating) and that's no coincidence. Along with son in law Jared Kushner's Observer, Breitbart's alt-right (read: White nationalist) outlook was always slanted in favor of Trump.The two are virtually inseparable and while Trump has done far more to damage the site's brand name than Breitbart has done to Trump's still-lucrative brand, their fates still seem to be inextricably entwined in a slow motion death spiral one can but helplessly watch.

     Since Bannon waddled to the White House, they'd lost 90%, or 2300 of their sponsors (Don't worry, they still have Jazzy Jeff). The only reason they haven't dried up and blown away is because they still have the deep pockets of right wing hedge fund manager Robert Mercer.

     And then, the day before he himself was axed in this super-sized edition of The Apprentice, Bannon took a page from the Mooch and called up The American Prospect, to bloviate on all matters sundry. In the "accidental" on-the-record interview, an upbeat Bannon bragged about who he was going to fire at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. He was essentially a coked-up version of Karl Rove, sans filter.

     He called for trade sanction against China, perhaps forgetting, or not caring, that the Trump administration Organization is doing brisk business with the world's last Communist superpower, especially in the area of Trump-branded massage parlors and prostitution services. Bannon also struck an ominous note when he said his "hands were back on (his) weapons" and more than hinted he was, as he always had been, gunning after the GOP establishment.

     This can't be bad news for progressives and Republicans are shitting their pants that Bannon's planning on dismantling the party from the swamp on up. How much credibility Bannon still has after his site's plummeting fortunes and his own fall from grace remains to be seen but for now, he's looked upon by the left as a useful idiot.

     But a lot of people still listen to him, primarily the white nationalists he's enabled and glorified in the racist pages of Breitbart. And establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, men who don't scare easily, are soiling their pants over what Bannon can still do to the Trump administration to which, as with Breitbart, they'd ill-advisedly had hitched their wagon.

     While it's too early to predict the demise of Breitbart, the now-defunct neo Nazi site Daily Stormer that had been hacked by Anonymous and killed off for good by its host GoDaddy after the disaster in Charlottesville can be seen as a bellwether. America has had it up to the stratosphere with the noxious racism and bigotry represented by Breitbart. Their best days are behind them. Now it only remains if Breitbart will hire Bannon back to dismantle the hideous machine they'd painstakingly built up, the smoking, clanging machine of the Trump administration.