Well that’s because California is pro-prison and also because the simple arguments for prison labor are well known and arguments against it aren’t.
Most people don’t think about it beyond “they committed a crime and it costs money to keep them in there, therefore they should be helping to pay for that”. That’s about as deep as it goes.
This is such an overreaction honestly and I think it’s just giving a false start to the alarmism about Project 2025 which is exactly what these dumb extremists want. Allow me to explain.
Matt Walsh actually said this as a joke. Bannon is probably only half joking. Both had the intention of making articles like this happen so that when the backlash reaches conservative ears they can swat it away and say hey, it’s an obvious joke. Because it was.
The point is the same as what they’ve done with other phrases. They’ll point out the unjustified alarmism and use it to take the power out of the Project 2025 criticism. This is the problem with sensationalist media, they’ll raise alarms about everything well before people should listen. Then people ignore them.