{"id":30220,"date":"2020-08-20T10:14:40","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T15:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=30220"},"modified":"2020-08-20T10:14:40","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T15:14:40","slug":"speaking-of-third-raters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/08\/20\/speaking-of-third-raters\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking Of Third Raters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Trump senior advisor and b\u00eate noire<\/em>\u00a0of American liberals Steve Bannon turns out to be just another third-rate … criminal<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

Federal prosecutors on Thursday indicted one-time presidential aide Steve Bannon and three others on charges of taking money donated to help build a wall along the southern border, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, Timothy Shea “and others orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors,” according to prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n

The defendants’ online crowdfunding campaign \u201cWe Build The Wall\u201d raised more than $25 million, with Kolfage “repeatedly and falsely assured the public that he would ‘not take a penny in salary,'” prosecutors said in a statement. And Bannon “publicly stated, ‘we\u2019re a volunteer organization,’\u201d prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

But in fact, prosecutors said, the defendants took hundreds of thousands of donated dollars and used them for personal expenses. [NBC News<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh, sure. Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe he’ll wriggle his way free.<\/p>\n

If Trump issues a pardon, though, then it’s an acknowledgment of guilt.<\/p>\n

And I’m not sure how this’ll play with the Trumpian base. Maybe Bannon had failed from their collective consciousness. Or maybe he’s a receding cousin of the deity, who’s being unfairly trashed.<\/p>\n

That’s for the more delusional members.<\/p>\n

But, in retrospect, this is unsurprising. Criminality in Trump’s associates is not a new thing. They are, so far as I can see, uniformly motivated by greed; those that are not swiftly disassociate themselves. And they find out that being intense isn’t enough when breaking the law.<\/p>\n

Goodbye and hello, Bannon. You are just part of the entertainment. Nothing more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Trump senior advisor and b\u00eate noire\u00a0of American liberals Steve Bannon turns out to be just another third-rate … criminal: Federal prosecutors on Thursday indicted one-time presidential aide Steve Bannon and three others on charges of taking money donated to help build a wall along the southern border, authorities said. \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30221,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30220\/revisions\/30221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}