Good summary account of Steve Bannon’s arraignment on Politico. Skid-row Steve entered the courtroom in handcuffs and tried to boost the melodrama with his bon mot “They will never shut me up, they’ll have to kill me first.” But his six-count indictment for money laundering and conspiracy to defraud suggests that the better epigraph for the occasion was shouted by a bystander as Bannon was entering the court: “Stop hurting America, you greasy grifter.”

Steve is right, of course, They will never shut him up, for only death will silence him. Bannon has tried very hard over the years to fashion for himself the persona of a revolutionary pundit. This has not come out very well. He has been more an insurrectionist Walter Mitty who strives, by blather about rebellion, revolution, seizing power, and so on, to grab attention. It’s the attention that matters, not the politics. What inspires Mr. Bannon is Trump’s Disease, an insatiable craving for notoriety, and sufferers from that affliction never shut up.