I'm Starting to Think The Trump Campaign Had Some Bad Apples
Okay, it's possible that my tin foil hat is wedged on too tightly so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm starting to think that not everything about the president, his band of Dick Tracy villains, or the GoFundMe they started to build a wall is on the up-and-up. Cancel me if you must, but I'm having a few doubts, retroactively of course. Specifically, I'm unsure about the idea that people with the ear of the president thought the best option for protecting the innocent people of America from a deranged band of strawmen who are still making their way up from the Central American republic of Brigadoon was to send around the collection plate. Initially, when then-candidate Trump started talking about building a wall I thought he meant metaphorically. "The wall is racism," I leaned over and whispered to the person next to me. And we all know that racism doesn't cost money, just your soul, so I assumed these conversations about paying for the construction of an actual wall were literary allusions. "Who will pay?" I whispered to the person next to me rhetorically. So, imagine my surprise when an online fundraising campaign called We Build the Wall appeared in December of 2018 and quickly raised $17 million dollars. I leaned over to the person next to me and whispered "The $17 million dollars is an allegory."
Now it seems that that not only was the money Al Gore-ical, but apparently it was fraudulently collected and spent! Early Thursday morning, former Trump adviser Steven Bannon was indicted on two counts: conspiracy to commit mail fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. And I? Am in shock! Did you ever imagine a close associate of Donald Trump being indicted for a crime? Who do prosecutors think this guy is, Susan B. Anthony?
The indictment alleges that Bannon and some other henchmen who will be played by television character actors in the movie version of this, conspired to defraud me and the other people who blithely gave our last farthing to the We Build the Wall campaign in hopes that a private group of citizens with no accountability would then use the funds to build a wall that spanned the length of the Southern border on federal land. It seemed like a really fool-proof plan. I mean, we live in a country where I regularly contribute to GoFundMe campaigns launched by teachers who want to buy educational supplies, people facing huge medical bills, and citizens who need disaster relief even though all of those are human rights that my taxes should cover, so it makes sense that I was also going to have to fund Infrastructure Week. Nevertheless I am shocked to find that after sending money to a group of strangers led by a guy with "Wilford Brimley in The Firm" energy, said group did not actually immediately go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of bricks and mortar.
Perhaps it's the donors' fault for not asking for specifics. One of Bannon's alleged co-conspirators is reported to have used $350,000 of the donated funds on things like cosmetic surgery and home repairs. So perhaps the wall in question was in a new sunroom or the straight slope of a Botoxed brow. That's not what people who contributed to the campaign thought they were giving money to (they thought they were giving money to racism), but it does technically qualify.
Bannon for his part is alleged to have received over $1 million from "We" "Build" "The Wall", which the New York Times reports he have spent on "personal expenses". I do not know what personal expenses means but my hope that he spent all of his ill-gotten gains contributing to other scam GoFundMe campaigns in an ouroboros of bamboozling.
The Trump associate was arrested off the coast of Connecticut on a $35 million dollar yacht. Here's exclusive video of Bannon greeting Coast Guard officers:
While I try to heal from the shock that someone as trust-worthy and definitely non-criminal as Steve Bannon would be mixed up in this whole thing, I do suppose I can take some pleasure in the fact that Bannon's arrest was partially facilitated by the Post Office police since that's another organization that apparently we have to privately fund through online campaigns. I need to know a lot more about these postal inspectors. While I am very much for prison abolition, somehow I am also super interested in Mail Jail. I would definitely watch a documentary about Steve Bannon imprisoned in a very large Express Mail box, covered in those stamps that have Bugs Bunny in drag. I would donate to a GoFundMe campaign that was raising funds for that. They wouldn't even have to pretend; they could just tell me straight up "This is a scam, but you will get to see Steve Bannon sitting in a cell being guarded by Mr. McFeely from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. And when you see it, you can lean over to the person next to you and whisper 'That's not a metaphor; this is actually happening.'"
You Might Also Like
