Bukele Press Conference:

Watching today's press conference with Bukele was horrifying for many reasons. One of those was the way that Miller immediately interjected to tell Trump the Supreme Court ruled in their favor when Trump asked about the "9-0" ruling. On Friday, when asked about the ruling, Trump said:

 “If the Supreme Court said bring [Abrego-Garcia] back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court”

Then on the weekend Trump posted to Truth Social about the case. I could be reading too far into it, but it seems there's a decent chance this wasn't written by Trump at all. First of all, it's a bit too formal and boring for Trump these days. Little to no caps or weird punctuation.

But even more interesting, Trump doesn't really use the term 'barbarians' when he talks. But Miller's been quoted as saying "the Barbarians are at the gates" in reference to BLM protesters, and it generally seems more like a phrase someone like Miller would use.

Looking forward to seeing President Bukele, of El Salvador, on Monday! Our Nations are working closely together to eradicate terrorist organizations, and build a future of Prosperity. President Bukele has graciously accepted into his Nation's custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the World and, in particular, the United States. These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation, and their future is up to President B and his Government. They will never threaten or menace our Citizens again!

Based on his reaction during the press conference today, it seems like Trump is still relatively unaware of Abrego-Garcia's case and the way things have proceeded, including the Supreme Court's decision.

Signal Group Chat:

Then we have the Signal group chat incident. If you'll recall, in that chat there was some back and forth and lack of clarity over whether the strike had even been authorized. It was then Miller who provided the ultimate clarification:

As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t renumerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.

Covering His Ass:

Miller is often described as the true architect behind the entirety of the current Admin's immigration policy. The policies that were sold to the American people as stricter control of the border and deportation of illegal aliens.

One big problem was how much Miller oversold the problem to Trump, and Trump to the American people, the extent of the problem and the number of deportable, (or at least quickly deportable) people were currently in the US. This had led to decisions like the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to kidnap and indefinitely detain men (and almost women) in the CECOT prison in El Salvador. If they can get away with whisking people off without any trials or court proceedings, then it becomes much easier to hit any deportation goal they want, and calling them terrorists and shipping them to a big scary prison (a modern day gulag), is one way to show the American people they're getting what they voted for.

For this strategy to fall apart, for the lack of due process and the torturous conditions being experienced by normal people rather than 'terrorists' to be fully exposed in primetime TV to the public would blow up the entirety of the admin's immigration policies and likely all blow back on Miller. Which is why my theory is that right now he's fighting for his life, pulling out all of the stops he can to try to keep Trump in the dark about the actual facts of the Abrego-Garcia case, having Bondi and the DoJ lawyers use every possible legal strategy and delay tactic to prevent the return of a single person disappeared to El Salvador.

And if he needs to cause a Constitutional Crisis to do so I'm certain he would have no qualms with that.


Previously Documented Influence:

There's also numerous articles from the first Trump admin that go into Miller's influence over Trump, all of which paint a picture of a man who has found the right way to be Trump's whisperer, a man who seems very capable of manipulating Trump, more so than anyone else in the admin.

NewYorker Article
BBC Article

Concluding:

All this to say, for all the talk of Biden's WH being run by staffers, we have far more evidence that Trump is absolutely phoning it in and Miller, at least on the immigration front, is clearly running the show.

One big problem: The US Government is not a business.

Moving fast and breaking things can work in business because the stakes are contained, if you break something critical to the business, say for instance your user-facing website, you learn about the problem quickly and can also usually fix it quickly. You might lose revenue during the downtime and maybe lose a couple customers, but the stakes are relatively low and acceptable, after all if you want your business to survive you sometimes need to take risky actions. Again, at the end of the day the stakes involved are relatively low, businesses fail all the time and bankruptcy exists for a reason, rarely are people losing their lives when a business goes under.

It's also worth noting that moving fast and breaking things doesn't always work, especially if you don't fully understand the business. So far X has been a good example of this. Although Musk obtained the business at a high premium shortly before a market correction, revenues continue to remain near half of what they were prior to Musk taking over in spite of the market and revenues recovering for competitors. There's also no denying the degradation of moderation, support services, and other Trust and Safety protections, such as the combatting of bot accounts, scams and fraud, that have led to the user experience becoming significantly worse than what it was in 2022.

Perhaps in the coming 5-10 years the degradation will turn around, or a case can be made that Twitter was never going to succeed on its prior trajectory and the funding of the support, moderation, and trust and safety teams and systems was shortsighted and a degraded user experience and increase in bot and scam activity won't actually prevent the business from being successful. I would argue that Musk clearly did not intend for this to be the path when he took over, as was evidenced in how much he railed against bot activity which he no longer mentions and has made easier to coordinate, in addition to the lawsuits he's launched complaining about advertisers who have pulled out after his moderation failures and active hostility towards them. But Musk has enough resources and talented people willing to work for him or currently working for his other businesses that X can continue as a failing business for many years to come with little to no high-stake negative effects and it'll be a long time before we're able to accurately assess whether the "move fast and break things" was an effective approach.

Despite this, and lack of tangible success, Musk's cavalier approach is already being publicly lauded by MAGA, Republican members of Congress, and his tech allies. DOGE doesn't just have a 'mandate' in their eyes, many of them see it as a divine directive, one they're already very successful on. This is despite the fact that no allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse, have been substantiated. So far the majority of savings, which are being massively inflated, are from employment cuts and ending Congressionally approved and funded programs (which is being found by judges on both sides of the aisle to be unconstitutional). In the process of making these 'cuts' Musk/DOGE has already broken plenty of things including: information security practices (causing the resignation of multiple security chief and Trump-appointed agency heads), breaching and leaking classified information on the DOGE website, stranding USAID employees in foreign countries and isolating them from support and services they had no warning they would lose access to, and cutting off support to volunteers in the middle of medical trials. These are not the same low-stakes that make 'breaking things' acceptable in a business like X. These are quite high stakes, that can have life threatening consequences.

Thousands of government employees across numerous administrations and services are also being terminated. Many of these employees are 'probationary' which can mean anything from short-term services to those who decided to take a promotion to a manager or supervisor role which requires a probationary employment period. Some of these employees are veterans working for the VA in what are described as 'critical' roles by their supervisors. Some might argue these are necessary sacrifices in the greater good of austerity, but the question that makes this all the more infuriating is asking "to what end?" To what end are we upending the lives of veterans, of park rangers, of agencies and services dedicated to serving the people of the United States, not the rich, but average people who rely on government services on a regular basis? To what end are we exposing the country to massive infosec vulnerabilities, and allowing the world's richest man unfettered access to data and systems he can leverage to further enrich himself? To what end are we shutting down programs and teams dedicated to combatting and ending infectious diseases domestically and globally?

The answer is tremendously disappointing. The savings the American people are getting from ending the employment of good, qualified, hard working Americans, and shutting down programs that produce useful research and results and have run for decades, is actually no savings at all. That's because those savings are immediately being offset by a renewal of a tax cut package that threatens to add over $5 trillion to the National Debt over the next 10 years. That means even if we take DOGE's fake numbers at their face value, we're saving a penny for every dollar being added to the debt.

The government already has plenty of functions established and built in to detect waste and fraud, watchdogs, auditors, agencies all dedicated to ensuring good stewardship of the taxpayer money. Many of these operate quite effectively and produce real results, not the smoke and mirrors DOGE produces. We don't need wrecking ball Musk to come in and break and cripple entire agencies to find savings. To make measurable progress on reducing the debt we need a President and Congress willing to take tough austerity measures that traditionally include expanding the tax base, increasing tax receipts, making changes to benefits programs like social security and Medicaid, or finding ways to increase economic production. The problem is, these are hard and long-term problems, not quick fixes, and they often have political costs that people like Trump are keen to avoid.

I'm not sure what Musk and Trump's end goal is with DOGE, as they're almost certainly doomed to fail at making any measurable progress against the debt. As it stands, the only achievements they appear to be making are to make the government worse and less efficient, and whether that's being done intentionally in hopes of further eroding trust and feelings towards the government, pure greed and desire to enrich themselves, or out of misguided principles or understandings of the function of government, I'm not sure. Regardless, things are getting broken, and I can guarantee you that the interests of the average American are not being served by it.

America was established on the ideals of democratic representation, born from colonies rebelling against a monarch who ruled unilaterally. The Framers of the Constitution, recognizing the perils of concentrated power, instituted a system of checks and balances among three branches of government, granting legislative authority exclusively to Congress. Trump's assertion undermines these principles, suggesting a unilateral determination of legality and morality, reminiscent of the very tyranny the Constitution was designed to prevent.

To backtrack a bit, Trump's first month in office has been (intentionally) chaotic. From a slurry of Executive Orders, several of which have already been blocked as 'blatantly unconstitutional', to the havoc being wreaked by Elon Musk and DOGE staffed with unqualified and likely compromised software engineers rather than lawyers, auditors, or tenured civil servants, it's been (again, intentionally) very hard to keep up with it all.

Particularly concerning is the administration's approach to the rule of law. From pardoning individuals convicted of sedition related to the January 6th Capitol riot to the recent pardon of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, convicted of attempting to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat, Trump has signaled that criminal behavior is permissible if it serves his interests. This pattern continued with the dismissal of federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, an apparent quid pro quo, makes it clear that loyalty to Trump can override legal accountability.

These actions, and the public's perceptions of these actions, have an undeniable deleterious effect on the soul of the country. Some may try to argue that politics has always been pay for play and a corrupt game played by the elite who always manage to come on top, but this is a fatalistic, cynical view that is inconsistent with history and the trajectory the country has been on. The difference can be directly observed just in the example of the attempt to dismiss the case against Eric Adams. Never before have so many non-partisan career prosecutors from a variety of backgrounds resigned and publicly stated just how improper and corrupt the dismissal would be, that it would give the president undue leverage over the Mayor and cause significant distrust in the Department of Justice. The facts of the case, and the public record all show this to be true and expose the administration to be clearly attempting a quid pro quo that provides them what is essentially blackmail leverage over Adams.

The deleterious effect is felt not just by those who disagree with the administration, but is most dangerous for those within and close to the administration. What concern does a Republican Governor who knows they're in Trump's graces have for any illegal action? They know that Trump's DOJ, should it ever catch wind of their actions, would be told to stand down, with no investigative steps ever being greenlit by DOJ leadership. This puts all sort of illegal and corrupt practices on the table, everything from domestic and foreign bribery, to embezzlement, even up to the jailing or investigation of political opponents under false pretenses on the table.

Although the risks of the deleterious effect are most present among those within or close to Trump's circle, it's pervasive even among the public. As someone who prides themselves on being an upstanding citizen that does their best to never skirt laws (except perhaps speed limits), even I feel the temptation to cut corners on my taxes, especially after learning that Musk plans to make cuts to the IRS. What reason do I have to believe it will be funded and capable enough to catch a few cut corners? For all we know they'll be told to significantly cut back on their audits all together in the coming months. For me to be considering that, I imagine it's already being fully plotted by many with less scruples throughout the country. After all, if everyone else can get away with crime right now, why shouldn't I?

These intangible sentiments and 'vibe shifts' have lasting and far reaching effects, they erode the fabric and ethos of the country and make corruption and other illegal acts the norm rather than the exception. All of this sets us back as a country, and as a community, and perhaps more dangerously, it makes the consolidation of power and the usurpation of laws all the more easier. How much longer do we have until Trump crowns himself the emperor of America?