One day before his arrest, Steve Bannon appeared on Newsmax and offered this surprisingly frank and mostly accurate assessment of what The Lincoln Project and other Never Trump groups are doing.

STEVE BANNON: Remember, these are the hardcore of the Trump haters. But nobody should dismiss, these are smart, tough guys, right? They just hate Trump and they actually hate Trumpism. Remember, the key to The Lincoln Project is that they say we don't only want to defeat Trump, we want to defeat Trumpism. What they mean by that is populism and nationalism. These are old-school RINOs that are globalists, ok? They've now applied this, and i think in a very sophisticated and smart way they're just trying to peel off ..You know they call it the Bannon line, like the old Mendoza line if you're a baseball fan, right. Mendoza hit .215. The Bannon line was about 4%. And if they can peel off those voters it's gonna be trouble. Rembember, we won Michigan and Wisconsin by fog and a mirror, and 42,000 votes in Pennsylvania. We won three states with under 78,000 votes. I've always said, we drew an inside straight. We shouldn't fool ourselves about the victory in '16. If we are serious about winning in '20...

The co-founder of The Lincoln Project cackled, "Yes, we’re living rent free in his head!"

#TheBannonLine - If just 4% of GOP voters leave Trump his loss would be sweeping. Check out this clip of Steve Bannon the day before he was arrested, referencing the @ProjectLincoln strategy. Yes, we’re living rent free in his head. #LincolnProjectEffect pic.twitter.com/jNOVMDLh39

— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) August 22, 2020