WATCH: Steve Bannon Records Video For Bolsonaro, Who Won’t Leave Office, Urges Lake To Claim Hobbs ‘Will Never Be Legitimate Governor’

Imagine a world where a convicted felon, currently out on bail pending appeal, is actively trying to overturn elections in two different countries, so that a disgraced former POTUS and a grifting former TV anchor can hopefully ascend to the White House in two years and make the world safe for autocracy. It’s a plotline that you could never sell to Hollywood, but that’s because in Hollywood these days, made up stories make a lot more sense than reality.

Jair Bolsonaro has not left office, despite losing the election in Brazil. Initially, it seemed like he was going to accept the results of the election and go on his merry way, but that was then and this is now.

Today, his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who claims to be friends with both Steve Bannon and Donald Trump, posted a piece on Brazilian media, wherein Bannon praises protesters in the streets and encourages the overthrow of the election. This mirrors the same activity Bannon is fomenting in Arizona.

Bannon is attempting to instigate a coup in Brazil. Eduardo Bolsonaro puts out a video of Steve Bannon this morning, where Bannon tells them their election was stolen and praises people protesting in the streets: “It’s going to be very interesting to see how that plays out.” pic.twitter.com/HvxcJQTDkf

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 23, 2022

That’s in Brazil. Here is what’s in Arizona.

Right-wing activists are organizing a protest in front of the AZ Capitol this Friday to demand a “revote” of their election. pic.twitter.com/KQ9jjOE7D8

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 23, 2022

And both groups of people are taking marching orders from a guy who has been convicted of contempt of congress and would be in prison now, serving his term, but for a judge who decided to give him every chance in the book. While I respect the judge giving Bannon the opportunity to appeal, because he did file the appeal in a timely fashion, it’s well known that that was a stalling tactic on Bannon’s part so that he can do this, incite more insurrection.

That’s a sobering thought, but alas, there’s some truth in it. The culture war is raging like wildfire these days and with the same destructive effect.

Now, as to redoing the election in Arizona: they can fuggedaboutit. On some level Bannon, Lake, Trump, all of them know that, but apparently the grifting is still good — or at least, hope springs eternal that it’s still good.

Kari Lake apparently decided way back that her running for governor was a win/win situation. If she won, swell. She’d be the governor of Arizona. If she lost, swell. She’d claim it was all a sham and pursue her real dream job, which is being on the 2024 GOP ticket as Trump’s VP. The Bulwark:

The signs of Lake’s sub rosa vice-presidential campaign are clear. First, she took a few days to huddle with political advisers after her loss was clear and before she announced that she would go full election-denial. It seems likely that they were debating whether the midterms would be a death-knell for Trump’s future prospects.

Next thing we knew, Lake showed up at Mar-a-Lago. Which tells us what answer they came up with: Lake’s team calculated that Trump remains the most likely Republican nominee for 2024. Even—perhaps especially—if there are multiple challengers to his throne. Lake remembers how 2016 played out.

But even if Trump can’t win the nomination, it’s not a bad bet for Lake to think that election denial wouldn’t be a VP dealbreaker if DeSantis emerges as the nominee.

In any event, there Kari Lake was at Mar-a-Lago, popping up like the head of an Arizona desert prairie dog rising for a lookabout. She came glammed up to hug the former guy and then went full-bore election denier, refusing to concede and calling the whole nation’s elections “a circus, run by clowns.” She released a two-minute video falsely asserting that “tens of thousands” of Maricopa County citizens had been disenfranchised.

This claim—you will be shocked to learn—is false.

Again, I believe that Lake and Trump are both misreading the room. I don’t think they’re going anywhere. This is another mirage, like the fabled Red Wave that never materialized. All that has happened, at least as of Wednesday morning, is that the Republicans now hold 222 seats to the Democrats’ 213, which is a mirror image of how it was the last two years. So the Democrats held on by a single digit majority and now the Republicans are in the same position. Hardly the “blood bath” which was predicted.

The Trump/Lake ticket is likewise the same kind of folly. I don’t know where the base for them to get elected is going to materialize, because if the midterms taught us anything, they taught us that Trump’s endorsement is not the Midas touch, it’s closer to the kiss of death.

Nevertheless, this is where Trump and Lake are going, because there’s a dollar in it. And it’s for damn sure that’s what Bannon is doing.

Still, Lake has hinted that there will be litigation to challenge the results of the election. If so, it will go no better than Trump’s lawsuits fared in 2020. But Lake understands that while Trump’s lawsuits tanked as legal challenges, they succeeded as list-building and fundraising vehicles.

A state-wide recount has about the same prospect of making Lake the winner as a camel’s odds of squeezing through the eye of a needle. A 2019 study by the nonpartisan group Fair Vote found that in 30 recounts it studied, they shifted the outcome by an average of 0.024 percent. Lake is currently more than 17,000 votes behind the winner, Katie Hobbs. That’s 0.6 percent.

But as with Trump, all this noise from Lake isn’t really about overturning the election. It’s aimed at keeping Lake’s victimhood front and center with both Trump and his base, just as Trump’s election denial in 2020 was aimed at keeping his hold on the Republican party. Lake’s game is about getting herself on the 2024 ticket, one way or another, damage to democracy be damned.

Great. Now we’ve got 1) what’s left of the Republican party; 2) the Democratic party and 3) the Victimhood party.

Here’s the latest Bannon/Lake collaboration. Bannon is attempting to do to Katie Hobbs what he did to Joe Biden, which is convince 2/3 of the Republican party that Biden didn’t really win.

Once again I say, if you tried to sell this to Hollywood, they would laugh you off the lot. However, as ludicrous as this is, it is pernicious, make no mistake. Lies grow wings while the truth is getting its boots on, to quote Mark Twain. The Big Lie has been very powerful in this country, since Trump introduced it in January, 2021.