The True Villain

 In this post from Richardson, she mentions the outsized role that Stephen Miller plays in the Trump Administration. Because Trump is so freaking old, stupid and now cognitively impaired - to the point where he can't speak to the press unsupervised, because he goes on bizarre tangents - there has been a lot of talk about who the "True President" is going back to Elon Musk's suzerainty over the DOGE nonsense.

Musk, however, is a malignant narcissist like Trump, and their falling out was inevitable. Miller (and to a degree Steve Bannon) have perfected the art of flattering Trump in a way that has kept these evil little toad at the center of all of the awful things Trump is doing. I've said before that I don't think Trump is a "by the book" fascist, but Miller certainly is.

I'll just quote from Richardson:

Just who is in charge of the administration remains unclear. In the New York Times yesterday, Jason Zengerle pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the “final word” on White House policy. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem defers to him. Attorney General Pam Bondi “is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice” to him. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is concentrating on “producing a reality TV show every day,” a Trump advisor told Zengerle.

So Miller, with his knack for flattering his boss, wields power.

This would be less than ideal in any administration, but especially one so void of oversight and one that has crushed all dissent as being disloyal to Trump. How much of the paranoid governance and the North Korea style Cabinet meetings are orchestrated by Miller? He's a relentlessly vindictive cretin who has institutionalized the craven sycophancy that made him the center of White House policy.

Trump is a slob - mentally, physically, emotionally - and it seems clear that his second administration has become a perfect vehicle for  Miller and likeminded assholes like Russell Vought to wage their war on American democracy. Trump is staring down the barrel of the actuarial table, but Miller will be with us for a long time.