Steve Bannon Talks with Tucker Carlson About Going to Prison.

Former Trump chief strategist is defiant, alludes to Moscow Show Trials.

On July 1, Steve Bannon will begin his 4-month sentence in a federal prison for two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress. His four months of incarceration has symbolic value, given that he—Trump’s former chief strategists—is widely regarded as one of the smartest guys in pro-Trump circles. Being incarcerated in the run-up to the election will prevent him from rendering assistance to the Trump campaign.

Mr. Bannon just had a conversation with Tucker Carlson in which he expressed defiance and compared the “lawfare” of the Biden Administration to the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s. His statement resonated with me, as I’ve often thought that the Biden Justice Department is now animated with a spirit that bears an eery resemblance to the spirit of Stalin’s judiciary. We’ve not yet seen the unhinged fanaticism of the Soviet state prosecutor, Andrey Vyshinsky, but this doesn’t give me much comfort.

Weaponizing the judiciary at all is analogous to Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon in defiance of the Roman Senate. Once the decision is made to do so, a major taboo is broken, often with the enthusiastic support of the regime’s supporters, who are too possessed by personal animus to recognize that everyone will be imperiled by a partial judiciary.

Vyshinsky was infamous for spewing homicidal venom at the defendants who stood helplessly before him. Note how he perfectly projects his own viciousness onto the accused.

Shoot these rabid dogs. Death to this gang who hide their ferocious teeth, their eagle claws, from the people! Down with that vulture Trotsky, from whose mouth a bloody venom drips, putrefying the great ideals of Marxism! ... Down with these abject animals! Let's put an end once and for all to these miserable hybrids of foxes and pigs, these stinking corpses! Let's exterminate the mad dogs of capitalism, who want to tear to pieces the flower of our new Soviet nation! Let's push the bestial hatred they bear our leaders back down their own throats!

I hope and pray that this country is not really headed down the path of totalitarianism, and that I am being needlessly alarmist.