We all gotta eat, but Schlapp has had a long lucrative career as a conservative grifter (being a conservative grifter, unlike being a very fine and dedicated earnest left wing blogger, pays very well indeed). At some moment along the way he could've looked at the money in his bank and said, well, there's quite a lot in there, and it seems I'm on the other side of the great arc of life, so perhaps I should figure out if there's a better way to
be than this.
Many people make shitty choices because of precarity. That's capitalism, baby. But rich assholes don't actually have to spend their lives trying to make things worse for everybody else.