On Wednesday, the Department of Justice released an indictment of two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, charging RT and its employees with having paid millions of dollars to an American company, identified by news outlets as Tenet Media, with the intent of spreading the Russian government’s messaging.

Tenet Media’s website, which is a platform for content creators, lists popular right-wing influencers, including Tim Pool and Benny Johnson, as its “talent.” Pool, Johnson and the other purported beneficiaries of Russian largess pleaded ignorance, but even the most cursory review of their content indicates why Russia would want to amplify their voices. Pool, for example, recently proclaimed that “we should apologize to Russia” for supporting Ukraine, and that Ukraine is “the enemy of this country.”

In August, MAGA celebrated Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Trump, yet R.F.K. Jr. is popular with only a tiny fringe, and he might be one of the more bizarre politicians in American public life. This is a man, after all, who dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park. That’s one of his strangest scandals, but hardly his most consequential. He’s a veritable font of dangerous medical misinformation and may well be America’s most influential anti-vaccine activist, attacking not just the Covid vaccine but also the common childhood vaccines that have also saved countless lives.

And let’s not forget, if Trump loses, he’s highly likely to face federal juries in both Washington and in South Florida. (If he wins, he can order the Department of Justice to drop the cases.) If he loses one of those trials (much less both), then MAGA’s central figure won’t be able to mount a fourth run for the presidency. He’ll almost certainly be in prison. The rule of law will have done its work.

I know very well that Trump is just as scandalous and corrupt as many of the people I just talked about, but he succeeds where they fail in part because of the very thing I highlighted in the first paragraph. Before he was a politician, he was a monumental celebrity who built his brand on the notion that he was one of the most successful, astute and entertaining executives in the United States.