In August 2017, I was sitting in Steve Bannon’s cluttered office in the West Wing of the White House, arguing with the presidential strategist about U.S. policy towards China. Tariffs and tech restrictions wouldn’t do the U.S. any good, I told him: the United States needed to revive the kind of science driver that won the Cold War and invented the Digital Age during the Reagan years. We mocked up a set of policy points for the Defense Department. A week later Bannon was fired by then-White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, for the offense of trying to sandbag National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster.

I was saddened to read this morning that Bannon had been arrested with three other men by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly “defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as ‘We Build the Wall’ that raised more than $25 million.” When “Shoeless” Joe Jackson pleaded out to cheating in the 1919 World Series, Charley Owens of the Chicago Daily News told him, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” I want to ask Steve the same question.