Instead of bringing any special new benefits to Team Trump, it simply put all of their dirty laundry on display for everyone to see.
First off, it opened up the field for Hillary Clinton’s blistering speech yesterday against the alt-right, as well as the Clinton campaign’s other attacks linking Trump to not just Breitbart, but to Klansmen and other sundry white supremacists.
Next, the Trump campaign’s clumsy efforts to deny its alt-right connections has become utterly impossible. In the latest example, Trump himself got tripped up by Anderson Cooper. After the candidate claimed, “Nobody even knows what it is … this is just a term that was given that—frankly, there’s no alt-right or alt-left.” Cooper had only to point out that Bannon himself proclaimed Breitbart to be the voice of the alt-right. Trump’s reply: “I don’t know what Steve said.”
Finally, Bannon’s personal dirt is now the Trump campaign’s problem. The New York Post, a Trump-friendly outlet, is reporting on alleged domestic violence that Bannon committed against his ex-wife. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Bannon is illegally registered to vote at an unoccupied address in Florida, which is of course a crucial swing state. Who’s guilty of voter fraud now?