Walter Shapiro: “The 2022 midterm campaigns—with spending on TV ads alone likely to come close to $10 billion—have become a consultant’s dream. Almost everything spontaneous has been drained out of American politics. Now campaigns are almost completely waged with dueling 30-second spots in which the candidate is merely a bit player who often says nothing more than, ‘I approve this message.'”

“Candidates—especially right-wing Republicans—shun the traditional media as they largely campaign on conservative talk radio and safe venues such as Fox News and Newsmax. Public campaign schedules, which used to clog inboxes, are now often as closely guarded as all the nuclear secrets that are not housed at Mar-a-Lago. Safe spaces are what all campaigns desire since, in an age when everyone is a videographer, an off-key joke or a snappish response to a voter can be plastered all over Twitter and YouTube within three minutes.”

“No, we won. Fuck you.”

— Roger Stone, in a documentary clip showed at today’s January 6 Committee hearing.

“The day before the 2020 election, Roger Stone, the long-time Republican operative and ally of former President Donald Trump, said in front of a documentary film crew that he had no interest in waiting to tally actual votes before contesting the election results,” CNN reports.

Said Stone, in the video: “Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”

Stone claimed to the Washington Post the video is a “deep fake,” though there’s no sign it was manipulated in any way.

Paul Manafort told Insider that he makes no apologies for his actions that landed him in prison.

Said Manafort: “What’s different is my unwillingness to incorporate into my life people who have not proven themselves to be honest with me.”

With a memoir, Political Prisoner, coming out this month, Manafort “is eager to get back in the game.”

“A judge said Monday that he would not delay the contempt of Congress trial of Steve Bannon, just one week before it is set to begin,” NBC News reports.

Washington Post: The escalating dispute between Trump’s and Bannon’s legal teams.

Charlie Sykes: “Beyond the grift, the key to understanding Bannon — and his influence on the MAGA right— is recognizing that he’s a revolutionary, who knows he doesn’t need to persuade, and who doesn’t need a majority. Bannon knows that he just needs a hard-core vanguard willing to do whatever it takes.”

“And his goal is to burn it all down.”

“This also explains the fundamental asymmetry of our politics. On today’s podcast we discuss whether Bannon is playing checkers while his opponents are playing chess.”

“But I suggested a different image: Bannon is bringing an axe to a chess game — and his opponents haven’t figured that out yet, even though he’s told us repeatedly who and what he is.”

“A federal judge refused to throw Steve Bannon a lifeline on Wednesday, instead deciding that the right wing provocateur will indeed go to trial in the coming weeks for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee,” the Daily Beast reports.

“However, the judge indicated he may eventually hold the Department of Justice accountable for spying on one of Bannon’s defense lawyers and secretly obtaining his call and email records.”

“Bill Stepien, who told the Jan. 6 committee that he quit Donald Trump’s campaign after the 2020 election because he could not go along with his election lies, nevertheless continues to coordinate Trump’s political operation, which is built almost entirely on spreading those exact election lies,” the HuffPost reports.

He has already made at least $1.4 million by fueling it.

Jennifer Senior begins a profile of Steve Bannon by reviewing the stream of text messages he’s sent to her.

“There are certainly enough of them. He says he has five phones, two encrypted, and he’s forever pecking away, issuing pronunciamentos with incontinent abandon—after midnight; during commercial breaks for his show, War Room; sometimes while the broadcast is still live.”

“You can discern much of Bannon’s mad character and contradictions in these exchanges. The chaos and the focus, the pugnacity and the enthusiasm, the transparency and the industrial-grade bullshit. Also, the mania: logomania, arithmomania, monomania (he’d likely cop to all of these, especially that last one—he’s the first to say that one of the features of his show is “wash rinse repeat”). Garden-variety hypermania (with a generous assist from espressos). And last of all, perhaps above all else, straight-up megalomania, which even those who profess affection for the man can see, though it appears to be a problem only for those who believe, as I do, that he’s attempting to insert a lit bomb into the mouth of American democracy.”

“The Justice Department is suing Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chair, for almost $3 million in penalties related to his alleged failure to file reports disclosing more than 20 bank accounts he controlled in foreign countries, including Cyprus, the United Kingdom and St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Politico reports.

Former Trump adviser Paul Manafort was removed from a plane at Miami International Airport before it took off for Dubai because he carried a revoked passport, the Independent reports.

The Washington Post reviewed more than 20 hours of video filmed for the documentary, A Storm Foretold, which is expected to be released later this year.

“Roger Stone allowed the filmmakers to document his activities during extended periods over more than two years. In addition to interviews and moments when Stone spoke directly to the camera, they also captured fly-on-the-wall footage of his actions, candid off-camera conversations from a microphone he wore and views of his iPhone screen as he messaged associates on an encrypted app.”

“Since the beginning of 2020, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s reelection campaign has paid the Democratic consulting firm Authentic nearly a half million dollars for digital work and list acquisition,” Politico reports.

“Inside the firm, staffers have revolted over the contract, expressing shock and agitation that a company that professes fidelity to a set of progressive values has worked alongside a lawmaker many believe are standing in the way of progress on those values.”

“Roger Stone, a longtime associate of Donald Trump, is auctioning off a copy of a 1990s magazine cover he says is signed by the former president as part of a larger fundraising campaign to pay for his legal defenses and medical bills,” Politico reports.

“If the bid exceeds $20,000 dollars, the bidder gets the physical version of the magazine along with ‘one of only one’ digital copy, which Stone marketed as an NFT, or a non-fungible token.”