Mr. MacLaurel

 FBI deputy director and right-wing provocateur Dan Bongino announced yesterday that he would shortly be stepping down from his role in the executive branch, seemingly to return to his previous life as a MAGA podcast host. 

During his time in the administration, Bongino was mostly known for a few conspicuous flip-flops on key investigations. As a right-wing podcaster, he had promoted conspiracy theories about the January 6 pipe-bombing case, for instance. But once he was actually serving in government, he had to defend the FBI's real investigation into the alleged attack—which ended up pointing in a totally different direction from the baseless theories Bongino had once amplified. 

The New York Times, in reporting on the news of Bongino's departure, quoted a remark from him earlier this month on this subject that was starkly—perhaps unintentionally—revealing. When asked about the conspicuous change in the narratives he was promoting, he replied: "I was paid in the past [...] for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day I will be back in that space — but that’s not what I’m paid for now," he reportedly said. Now, he added, "I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts."

There are a number of interesting admissions in that disarmingly frank statement: 1) he is implicitly conceding that, as a right-wing podcast host and conspiracy theorist outside of government, he did not "base [his] investigations" or his various claims "on facts." Otherwise, why the contrast with his present role?

2) He expects to be "back in th[e] space" of being "paid for [his] opinions" "one day"—and most likely will be, now that he is no longer in government. And so, presumably, as soon as he leaves his role as FBI deputy director, he will go back to being a podcast host, where he will no longer have to base what he says "on facts." Relieved of that burden, he will be free to promote ungrounded conspiracy theories again to his heart's content. 

I am reminded of a passage from Thomas Love Peacock's Headlong Hall, in which the poet Mr. Escot wonders aloud why so many writers of his day seemed to change their political opinions like evening clothes—as if to take one night the part of "the people" and the next that of the people's "oppressors" were a matter of mere shifting modes or passing fancies. 

Peacock doubtless had in mind figures like Robert Southey, the poet laureate, (whom Peacock skewered in several of his great satirical works) who made a conspicuous political heel turn from reformer to reactionary, as soon as his self-interest was involved—echoes here of J.D. Vance, whom even the White House chief of staff conceded in an interview this week appeared to have changed his mind on Trump for opportunistic reasons.

When Mr. Escot presses the editor Mr. MacLaurel (a sort of compound of Southey, Walter Scott, and the Quarterly Review) about this curious mutability in the opinions of poets—this "strange fashion of forsaking" we might call it (quoting Wyatt)—Mr. MacLaurel makes a disarming admission of his own: 

"Ye mun alloo, sir," he replies, "that poetry is a sort of ware or commodity, that is brought into the public market wi' a' other descreptions of merchandise, an' that a mon is pairfectly justified in getting the best price he can for his article."

In other words, a man in this position is "paid for [his] opinions," he might say. 

Mr. MacLaurel proceeds: "Noo, there are three reasons for taking the part o' the people; the first is, when general leeberty an' public happiness are conformable to your ain parteecular feelings o' the moral an' poleetical fetness o' things: the second is, when they happen to be, as it were, in a state of exceetabeelity, an' ye think ye can get a gude price for your commodity,[...] ; 

"[T]he third is, when ye think ye can bully the menestry into gieing ye a place or a pansion to hau'd your din, an' in that case, ye point an attack against them within the pale o' the law; an' if they tak nae heed o' ye, ye open a stronger fire; an' the less heed they tak, the mair ye bawl; an' the mair factious ye grow, always within the pale o' the law, till they send a plenipotentiary to treat wi' ye for yoursel, an' then the mair popular ye happen to be, the better price ye fetch."

It is of course impossible to see into another person's soul. But based on Bongino's comments above, and the way he translated his own "bawling" as a podcast host into a position in government so quickly—I would suggest that his retailing of conspiracy theories—which he apparently knows were never based "on facts"—perhaps had a bit more of the second and third motives in them than the first.