March 20, 2021

Steve Bannon: Wellness Warrior?

The former Trump adviser is now hawking vitamins and other anti-science mumbo jumbo to fight COVID.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP

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Former Trump adviser and former Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon does not radiate “pinnacle of health.” The portly, cigar-smoking, possibly former alcoholic is not known for his workout ethic. But like many a far-right media figure, including Trump himself (once upon a time), Bannon is now hawking vitamins as a “Wellness Warrior.”

People have called Bannon a lot of things over the years. Wellness Warrior is not one of them. Yet Bannon now appears in ads on his website for “The War Room Defense Pack,” a collection of zinc and Vitamin D3, with the slogan, “You can’t fight if you’re sick!” Anyone ordering a free sample is treated to a complimentary “War Room Viral Defense Guide,” which doesn’t come right out and say it’s offering a COVID cure, lest Bannon run into trouble with the FDA. But the savvy consumer will be able to read through the lines. Despite a lack of any scientific evidence, lots of conspiracy theorists, and fanatical promoters of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID cure and prophylactic, believe zinc and Vitamin D can cure or prevent COVID. Bannon is clearly tapping into that demographic.

This being a slow news day, I decided to go down the rabbit hole and sign up for the free sample. After all, who could resist getting health advice from the likes of Steve Bannon? As you might expect, the free sample turned out not to be free, exactly. Shipping cost me $9.99. But I did get multiple opportunities to subscribe to monthly miracle immunity boosters, sent direct to my home—because “Taking zinc and D3 for just one month is NOT the answer.” In fact, the website told me, unless I’m eating oysters and red meat for every meal, and spend hours outside in the sun, “You are probably zinc & D3 deficient.” I could cure my deficiency by simply signing up for the low, low price of $44 a month—plus free shipping!

I declined to take this a year-long experiment. Instead, I looked forward to getting the War Room “guide” to better health, and keenly anticipated Bannon divulging the secret behind his distinctive greyish-pink pallor with the select few willing to risk putting credit card numbers into his website. Warily, I typed in my card number and hit submit. I immediately got a phishing email. Or maybe that was just a happy coincidence. But I did get the download link for the viral defense guide and was immediately disappointed.

It was hardly worth the shipping. Somehow, I’d imagined it would suggest a hot toddy, a cigar, and a dose of anti-malaria drugs for a case of COVID. Instead, the guide ran a paltry two paragraphs, barely a few bullet points. For those seeking to prevent a virus, it recommends using a nebulizer two or three times a day, with a mix of saline and hydrogen peroxide; eating 1/3 teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt; throwing back massive doses of zinc, Vitamin D and probiotics; and imbibing a gallon of water per day. If you’ve got symptoms, it recommends even bigger doses of D and Zinc, plus as much Vitamin C as your bowels can handle (really!) and some extra nebulizing.

The guide was such a lackluster effort that I felt like Bannon really didn’t have his heart in this one, as if he knew he was the most improbable Wellness Warrior ever to grace right-wing media, or get de-platformed from YouTube. Even Trump gussied up his overpriced vitamins with more hoopla back in the day. 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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