Posted on | February 3, 2026 | No Comments
Gemini Image
Mike Magee
In the 1994 classic movie, Reality Bites, college graduate and fledgling documentary film maker Winona Ryder forms a troubled bond with a troop of characters that includes GAP sales associate, Janeane Garofalo, who may have HIV; Steve Zahn who struggles to figure out how to tell his parents he’s gay; Ben Stiller, sometime lover of Winona; and Ethan Hawke who is falling apart in front of our eyes. As one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer noted, “In a picture full of painful moments, it’s hard to decide on the lowest point.”
Those words fit as well for the current political drama Americans have been forced to endure. Trump and Bannon and Miller, Kristi Noem and her ICE storm troopers, and JD Vance with a full range of supportive sycophants, religously play out their roles. And the peoples iPhone cameras are always rolling.
But none of this is new. As far back as January 27, 2017, Trump signed his first executive order. It banned travel to the United States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The action was temporarily blocked by court injunctions. But on June 26, 2018, there Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion gave the order a green light and even allowed an expansion of the list to include Venezuela and North Korea. By 2020, Trump added Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania.
Trump’s explanation: “As President, I must act to protect the security and interests of the United States and its people.” But his henchman, Bannon, was more forthcoming, publicly acknowledging that this was an intended “shock event.”
At the time, Boston College historian and political scientist, Heather Cox Richardson made this observation which continues to ring true today: “Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order…When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies.”
Steve Bannon may not be in the White House these days. But he’s never gone away. In the immediate wake of the ICE murder last week of ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, he boldly declared “He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew the consequences. The violent domestic terrorist mob in the streets of Minneapolis needs to stand down now.”
It’s only been a year since Bannon was released from his Danbury, CT, federal jail cell where he spent 4 months for Contempt of Congress. On the eve of his imprisonment, on July 1, 2024, Trump telegraphed what would happen next when he stated, “They wanted to silence him, but they’ll never silence him, but they wanted to silence him. Oh, this is pure weaponization. What they’ve done in this country is unthinkable, and Biden is going to pay a big price for it.”
Turns out the “reality bites.” After serving his 4 month term, in February, 2025, Bannon was forced to plead guilty to charges of fraud and conspiracy related to a financial scam in his “We Build The Wall” campaign. He was also barred from main stream social media platforms, but has reemerged with his “War Room” podcast targeted at the hardest core MAGA supporters.
The program has just a splinter of Trump’s followers, and Bannon maintains a love/hate relationship with top Trump administration high rollers like JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Still his brand of “truth telling” travels well in and among his conspiracy prone audience. Recently, the Brookings Institute examined 79 political podcasts and found that 70% of Bannon’s programs contained false information, exceeding both Glenn Beck and Charlie Kirk.
In an effort to reach a larger audience, he’s moving the podcast to Texas this month, he says, to focus on the Texas primary March 3rd. He’s no stranger to the state. On January 9th, he hosted an all day “oldie but goodie” conference and dinner in Grapevine, Texas, titled “Save Texas from Radical Islam”. It is indeed a period filled with “painful moments”, and one where “it is hard to decide on the lowest point.”
And yet, this weeks surprising Texas state Senate seat win by Democrat Taylor Rehmet suggests this modern day version of the classic film may still have a happy (2026 Midterms) ending.
