Jonathan Swan
Appearances
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
One Trump official that one of my colleagues talked to who only spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Exactly. So you now have a situation where you have an entire federal agency that's responsible for delivering aid around the world, where employees there are in a state of... confusion, anxiety. They don't know whether their agency will exist. Sure doesn't look like it will. And no one can say this is a surprise.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Trump campaigned on this, that we shouldn't be spending money overseas, that we should cut our foreign spending, and has been very clear that he intended to do this. So while there are really serious legal and Nobody who's been reading our coverage and listening to Donald Trump for the last four years should have any level of surprise that he's doing this.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
chin-stroking professor doing an analysis of government from the outside and, you know, let me sit down at my table and write you some recommendations. You know, Walter Isaacson wrote a biography about Elon Musk where people who know him talk about, quote-unquote, demon mode, which he goes into, which is this sort of manic energy, staying up all night, sleeping on the floor of the factory. He's
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, USAID makes up less than 1% of the federal budget. It spent about $38 billion in fiscal year 23. Elon Musk has said that their success will be measured on how many dollars per day they slash from federal spending. So they are looking for dollars everywhere, but there's definitely an ideological component here. Elon Musk has called USAID evil.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
That's not just saying, oh, there's $38 billion we want to trim out. No, this is an evil institution in his mind. And if you are looking for the platonic ideal of an agency that cuts against the quote-unquote America first agenda, it's probably the agency that sends money in foreign aid overseas. The White House sent out a list of
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
of things that they say that the USAID is doing that do not align with the president's agenda. They picked out, you know, examples that relate to diversity, equity, and inclusion around the world. And
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Basically, the impression that the White House has sought to create in the public mind is this is a quote-unquote woke agency run by radical lunatics, in Trump's words, that is spreading left-wing gender ideology around the world, and we're going to shut it down to save taxpayer money.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
So it's really interesting. After Trump won the election, won the popular vote, Democrats have been just a mess, you know, divided, everyone coming up with different theories about why they lost, depressed, some of them capitulating. But we've just seen in the last few days the resistance starting to awaken. And it's actually not Trump who's awakened them. It's oddly Elon Musk.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
We're starting to see organized labor rally against him. You're seeing lawsuits being filed.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
You saw protests in D.C. outside the buildings of OPM, USAID and the Treasury.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Democratic members of the Senate, who've been pretty quiet since the election, are starting to voice their outrage about what Musk is doing.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
You're starting to see the resistance, which had been really in hiding since the election, start to emerge again.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Now, people have been predicting for weeks that Trump and Elon Musk would fall out, that this relationship would not be sustainable. It's actually been much more durable than many people thought. Trump almost entirely speaks very warmly of Musk in private. But he did sound a little bit of a cautionary note on Monday when he was asked about Musk by reporters. And he said...
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
quote, Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval. And he said, if there's a conflict, then we won't let him near it. That's fine to say that, but it's not really what's happening in practice.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, I think there's sort of two separate parts to this. One is, is Elon Musk a brilliant entrepreneur who has shown that he is very ruthless about cost-cutting to the point where he's taken several of his companies to the brink of destruction before rescuing them and, in the cases of Tesla and SpaceX, turning them into transformational companies? Yes, yes, all of that is true.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Twitter, setting unrealistic deadlines, doing mass layoffs because he thinks stuff aren't hardcore enough. He's effectively trying to do that to the federal government. His team have moved beds into agency offices. He has an office space in the West Wing. And he also has been working out of this opulent Secretary of War suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office building.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Where this becomes thorny is we're not talking about an electric car company where, let's say, Elon Musk didn't manage to pull it back from the brink and it failed. Well, the only casualties of that are a slower transition to electric cars, some investors lose their money, some engineers lose their jobs. Not to diminish that, but... Now you're talking about the federal government writ large.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
So is there the possibility that Elon Musk and Trump could slash huge amounts of money out of the federal government? Yes, of course there is.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
The stakes are different, right? You're talking about the country and the federal government. And, you know, you're talking about the public interest. And just take one example, right? Elon Musk leads this effort to send out this email to the entire federal workforce, you know, email saying, basically, we'd love if you would just resign, basically. just think about that for a second.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Who are the federal employees that are most likely to take that offer? It's probably people who have options outside, who are sought after, who have technical expertise that is valuable, that private sector companies could benefit from. So you're going to potentially lose actually the thin layer of
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
at the top that is most skilled, most experienced, and potentially most critical to the functionings of government.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Yes, and the other thing that is challenging with this reporting on Elon Musk is that in this role, it's actually very hard sometimes to discern where the public interest ends and where Elon Musk's private interests begin.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, you have the richest man in the world whose companies have billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government. I mean, SpaceX, his rocket company, effectively dictates NASA's launch schedule. And you have the president of the United States giving Musk vast power over the bureaucracy that regulates his companies and awards them contracts. The intermingling is extremely tight.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
He's shaping not just policy, but personnel decisions. Officially, Musk is serving as a special government employee, according to the White House. But this is a status typically given to part-time outside advisors to the federal government who offer their advice based on their private sector expertise. And So he has not had to divest from any of his businesses.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
He still retains his interest in all his businesses. And he is hardly a part-time advisor offering advice. And that's before we even get to his... foreign conflicts. Tesla has relied to a significant extent on the Chinese government and the Chinese market. So there are just conflicts as far as the eye can see.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And he's brought with him this cohort from Silicon Valley, people who've worked for him at Tesla and SpaceX, and he's installed them in some of the most important parts of government. So this is Elon Musk getting his hands into government, doing what he's done at these companies. And remember, we should say he's been in the private sector, probably the singular entrepreneur, of our lifetime.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And while Trump has asserted that where there's a conflict of interest, they won't allow Musk to play in that area, the bare facts already disprove that.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
So what they used to exist in this country was the spoil system, was a patronage system where when power changed hands, government was stocked with supporters, people were rewarded benefits.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
With jobs, a series of laws were passed that made the civil service permanent effectively or gave them really strong job protections with the idea being that people develop expertise over a long period of time. These are not inherently political jobs or shouldn't be. And what we're potentially seeing right now
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
is the return to that spoil system, to eliminating this permanent bureaucracy and replacing it each time a new president comes in with their cohort. Not just for a thin layer at the top, as happens every administration, but for something, for a much larger group of people. And when you have the richest man in the world leading this effort,
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
still holding his interests in his private companies, still his companies doing billions of dollars of business with the federal government, still with his companies being regulated by the federal government. You have a level of conflict of interest that we've just never seen in the modern era.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
But if you understand what he's done with his business, he is marked by incredible risk-taking, extreme risk-taking, and a willingness to, if he or his employees consider regulations or laws to be quote-unquote dumb, he pushes them, and particularly at SpaceX, to defy those regulations, just do it anyway. And If people want to sue, so be it.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
If it gets to the mission of what he's trying to accomplish, we're seeing that kind of approach inside government right now.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, the first sign of Musk and his team moving into government, the first physical sign, was literally right after Trump's inauguration, the day after, workers in the Eisenhower Executive Office building, which is the big building next to the West Wing, they show up to work, and this building houses some operations for the United States Digital Service.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
This is an operation that was set up in 2014 to fix the federal government's online services. And they find a sticky note saying, Doge... D-O-G-E on a door to a suite that was once used as a workspace.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Yeah, literally a sticky note on the door saying Doge. And this used to be a workspace for senior technologists at the agency. And inside there were these black backpacks that were strewed about. You had these young engineers, many of them in their 20s.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Some of them were wearing T-shirts with blazers over them, roaming the halls, unfamiliar faces, didn't have security badges on that federal employees typically don't. And it turned out that this was the Musk army, the cohort of young men who work for Musk or who are in his network. And they have come to Washington to help Musk on his mission of slashing the federal government.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Yeah. And they're not wasting any time. My colleagues and I have talked to federal employees at different agencies, and it's really quite extraordinary. I mean, these Musk allies are interviewing people across agencies, asking them, what have you done lately? Give me examples of work you've done.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Exactly. And when the federal employees ask them, well, who are you? In some cases, they're refusing to give their names because they don't want to be doxed or they'll just give their first name. So there's this sort of atmosphere of we're putting the fear of God into all of you. And there is a real hostility that they're showing to the federal workforce.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, there's been so much, but one of the big signs of Musk's imprint was an email that went out to roughly 2 million federal workers, which is really kind of in itself extraordinary. You know, this is not something that normally happens. And they sent out this email offering them the option to resign, but be paid through the end of September.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And the email subject line, fork in the road, was the same one that Musk used in an email he sent to Twitter employees when he offered them severance packages in late 2022. And it says, basically, we'd love you to resign, quit your lower productivity public sector job and take a higher productivity private sector job. So it literally devalued their jobs.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Exactly. And then Musk goes further and starts targeting other departments. So where does he start? Musk began as a matter of priority with the Treasury Department. His team, and this goes back to December during the transition, but they became fixated on the payment system for the entire federal government that literally distributes more than $5 trillion a year in federal spending.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
So just imagine... millions of American social security details and personal details, a very, very closely guarded system, usually monitored by career civil servants who are very experienced. And this came to a head last week when a top career official at Treasury resisted giving Musk's representatives access to the federal payment system. He just said no.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
He just said, no, this is not going to happen. I don't agree with this. And he was threatened with administrative leave and then retired. So all this happens on Friday. And then the Treasury Secretary Scott Besant approved access for the Musk team to the payment system.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
That's right. And when we talk to former senior Treasury officials, they can't remember of an instance ever when this has happened. And there are understandable concerns that an intrusion into the system by outsiders, such as Musk's team, could lead to critical government obligations going unpaid from the missed benefit payments to even more dramatic consequences.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Now, very important to note, the White House has said on the record now, it took a while for us to get clarity on this, that the access they were granted was quote unquote, read only. At least that's what it is now. Meaning the Musk allies who are now treasury officials can read and monitor these payments, but can't alter them.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
There's two parts to this. So we've talked to a lot of people who Musk has talked to privately within the administration. His theory of government is the way to control government is to control the computers. So he wants to get access to the computers that house the critical data within the government, including all the personnel that are on the federal payroll.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
and also to get access to the pipes that distribute the money. And Musk has told administration officials that he thinks they could actually balance the federal budget if they eliminate all the fraudulent payments that are going out to fake people. There's no evidence to support that statement that I'm aware of.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
But to be fair to Musk, there are billions upon billions of dollars in improper payments that go out. There was a government accountability office estimate that the government made something like $236 billion in improper payments during the 2023 fiscal year. Most of those were overpayments. This is to different people around the country, social security, what have you.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
That's a lot of money, to be clear. It's a lot of money. And there is potential for cost savings here. But I mean, the federal deficit for 2024 was almost $2 trillion. So Musk is of the view that the government is spending vast amounts of money that is wasteful, that is fraudulent. And in his sort of platonic ideal, his engineers would just be able to cut off these payments that are going out and
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And the question then is, okay, well, what then? Because this is money appropriated by Congress, and it's not actually up to Elon Musk to unilaterally with his team direct what payments go out and what payments stay in.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Yeah, and I don't need to editorialize or speak in my own words on this. I mean, just listen to the people involved in this. You know, Russell Vogt, who served in Trump's first administration, and he's his choice again to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
He said in a 2023 speech, talking about the plans for their coming back into power, he said, we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. Wow. He said, when they wake up in the morning, we want them not to go into work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. He's a very close ally with Elon Musk. And Musk himself has the same mindset.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
I mean, it's very revealing the language he's using. He said very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend. So it's like the opposing team just leaves the field for two days. So you see the mindset. We are coming in and now fully empowered by the president of the United States with the attitude of.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
This is a government full of incompetent people, full of people who don't do any work, who are lazy, don't work the weekends. And we are coming in here with the sort of bureaucratic version of a bazooka. And he's even talked about eliminating entire agencies.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, he has turned his attention very aggressively towards the US Agency for International Development, which is known as USAID. This is the agency that is charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas. to some of the most vulnerable people around the world, you know, nutritional assistance for children, designed to help promote stability and humanitarianism.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Yes, his power is extraordinary. He effectively is unaccountable. Donald Trump has fully empowered him to roam across the federal government, get inside the pipes of the federal government, look at the payment systems and the databases to embed inside these agencies. Right. So this is not some...
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And we've seen now a pretty stunning series of events. A week ago, members of Musk's team entered the headquarters of USAID. They demanded and were granted access to the agency's financial and personnel systems.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
During that period, an acting administrator at the agency put about 60 senior officials on paid leave and issued stop work orders that led to the firing of hundreds of contractors with full-time employment and health benefits. By Saturday, the agency's website vanished. Like, literally just disappeared, went dark.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
And when the top two security directors at USAID tried to stop members of the Musk team from entering a secure area to get classified files, they were placed on administrative leave. Katie Miller, who works on the Musk Initiative, said on X that no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances. But by Monday, USAID was effectively paralysed. And...
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Musk has said that the president agreed that we should shut it down.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Well, remember, it's Congress, not the president, that gets to decide how to structure the executive branch of government. And Congress has enacted laws that says USAID should exist as an independent establishment. So this is running directly into very serious legal questions and questions about whether Congress... is going to assert itself as Trump basically runs roughshod over the institution.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
Right. And in terms of Musk's own authority, he's effectively unaccountable because Trump has given him his blessing. It's not like Trump is really interested in the minutia of the United States digital service or the treasury payment system or all of these pretty wonky and in some cases quite obscure parts of government that Musk and his team are taking control of.
The Daily
How Elon Musk Is Infiltrating Washington
He keeps Trump, you know, abreast. He drops into White House meetings. He has an office in the West Wing. He'll go into the Oval, talk to Trump on the phone. But even like senior members of the White House staff have found themselves in the dark about what he's doing and trying to figure out after the fact what
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
So I'm going to go right over to here, and I'm going to sign in front of you. Is that okay? Good.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Well, thank you very, very much.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
The golden age of America begins right now. Well, the speech itself is obviously American Carnage 2.0 on some level, right? And we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. This time around, eight years later, you hear the echoes of that speech again in this speech. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place. It's very much a speech of triumph, both politically but also personally. Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history. And I've learned a lot along the way.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom. and indeed, to take my life.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
A tide of change is sweeping the country. Sunlight is pouring over the entire world. And America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
No, the words national unity were uttered. National unity is now returning to America.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. He instead went for some of these wedge issues right from the start. It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
He said he's going to get rid of government programs that promote diversity and inclusion. I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty. It's going to end immediately.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
Yes, exactly. Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history's greatest civilization.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made. And Panama's promise to us has been broken.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.
The Daily
Pardons and Populism: Trump’s First Day Back in the White House
From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign, and independent nation. We will stand bravely. We will live proudly. We will dream boldly and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future is ours and our golden age has just begun. Thank you. God bless America. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So many of the executive orders that you've seen Donald Trump's sign with his sharpie in his first week in office were the work of Stephen Miller. Okay.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So Stephen Miller does a few things. One is he starts a nonprofit called America First Legal. And what he does with this group is he basically builds, in his mind, the right-wing version of the ACLU. He had spent the previous four years building in frustration with very effective left-leaning groups, sued the Trump administration on all sorts of policy areas.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And Stephen Miller wanted to create a version of that on the right. But the most important thing he did immediately after they left office was he demonstrated his undying loyalty to Donald Trump. Remember, when Trump left office, he was a pariah. He was a defeated president, but also an impeached president twice over and came close to being convicted by the Senate.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Many people wanted to move on from him. They saw him as the past, not the future.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Stephen Miller very publicly showed that he never left Donald Trump's side.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
This was one of the president's signature achievements. And when he's on TV, he's defending Trump, But he's also pushing forward his immigration agenda.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He went on Fox News. Seal the border. Deport all the illegals. He spoke at conservative conferences.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And he made sure that an anti-immigration perspective and a pro-Trump perspective were staying front and center among conservatives.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And the closer to the election we got, the more specific he got in his plans. And the last thing Stephen Miller does is he leverages his credibility and his connection to Trump to build relationships.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Well, there's two elements to it. So number one is on Capitol Hill. Stephen Miller knows that he's going to need a lot of money. to do what Donald Trump calls the largest deportation operation in American history. That involves building massive detention camps in the desert to hold migrants while you're waiting to fly them out of the country.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
It involves a huge amount of resources to round up immigrants, arrest them. So he... very methodically builds relationships in the Republican House and in the Republican Senate. The second category that was really important is rich people. He builds incredible donor relationships and raises a ton of money for the nonprofit, more than $40 million.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
But there's a quiet relationship that he builds that only became visible pretty recently. And he still is very secretive about it. And that's his relationship with Elon Musk. So Musk... had been very secretive about his political spending.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He did not want people knowing what he was up to, but he was secretly funding a bunch of advertising against transgender rights and other issues, and Stephen Miller's group was associated with this spending. So he was operating in secrecy as an advisor, political advisor, Donations advisor to Elon Musk. Wow. And that relationship became super important as Musk then became all in for Trump and
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
That's a big one. And Miller's vision that he's articulated for decades is now translated into these executive actions.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
spent more money than anyone else trying to elect Donald Trump.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
That's right. The first advantage Stephen Miller had in the four years out of power was he had a plan. He had the space to work on policy plans. And that was really evident to me when myself, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman did this big story in late 2023 on Trump's immigration plans. And we did an extensive interview with Stephen Miller.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And if you go back and read our story in New York Times, copy-paste, copy-paste, and it's what you're seeing right now. He had a fully formed vision, and it is exactly what they're doing right now. So he had the plan, but he also had these big thoughts of execution that were really important. It's what I'll just call flood the zone.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
His idea of flood the zone is you do so many things at once, so many aggressive, controversial actions at once, at speed, that your opposition is scattered and almost defenseless. When it's one of 50 or 100 actions that are extremely controversial... There's only so much bandwidth for the opposition to muster resistance, muster resources, muster outrage, muster legal action.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So you just flood the zone. You do so many things at once that your opposition, they might stop some of them, but they can't stop all of them. Overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelm.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
No, I don't think this has anything to do with sloppiness. They knew this was going to get challenged in court. They knew that this was radical, audacious policy. So this is not a matter of sloppiness. This is a matter of them testing the limits and seeing what they can get away with very deliberately.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
It is. I mean, look, they know that some of the actions they're taking are not going to pass legal muster. That's a feature, not a bug. They're doing so many things at once to crack down on immigrants, to deport immigrants, to block immigrants from entering the country, that the aggregate is going to be hugely restrictive, even if certain individual actions fail in the courts.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
No. If people are searching for internal opposition in the West Wing to the Trump-Steven Miller ideology, you're not going to find them. They don't exist anymore. Where you will find obstacles are in Congress. Republicans have very tight majorities, and we've already seen how dysfunctional the House Republican majority is, and so there's real questions there.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
You'll find obstruction potentially in the court system. It's not a given that all their policies will sail through. Frankly, if you're looking for restraint on Stephen Miller's maximalist impulses on immigration in particular... It's Donald Trump.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Well, he actually came to these beliefs very early on. Stephen Miller was talking about this populist nationalist stuff As a child, he grew up in Santa Monica in California in the 90s. He grew up in a fairly comfortable Jewish family. He was at this liberal high school. And he was this provocateur.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Well, he's not as hardcore as Stephen Miller is on immigration. Trump is very sensitive to the stock market. He does not want to see the stock market tank under his tenure. And if there are actions on immigration that would cause inflation, you know, deporting farm workers and others, that's something that's going to really... make Trump think twice about following through.
The Daily
Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And the other one is media coverage. I mean, we saw in term one, he did not tolerate that period of really aggressive, wrenching media coverage, particularly on television about family separation, these horrible images of crying children and what have you. And so Trump backed off that policy. So Trump, in combination with the stock market and media as his kind of own guardrails, he
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
is actually probably the closest thing you have to a restraint on the full Stephen Miller ideology.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
With complete deference. And I'll give you the perfect example of that. There's been this huge debate on the right recently about H-1B visas, these high-skill visas that tech companies love to bring in smart engineers and what have you from overseas. Stephen Miller has spent a good deal of his adult life rallying against these visas, but Donald Trump supports them.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And from all accounts, Stephen Miller has done very little, if anything, to try to dissuade Trump from that position recently. So I often find when I meet people who never interacted with Stephen Miller, they've only consumed him through Fox News or whatever. They have an impression of him that he is this fire breather, kamikaze pilot, my way or the highway, fight to the death, whatever.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
actually the opposite, extremely pragmatic, a very canny political survivor. You don't survive as long as he has in Trump's inner circle without being like that because the person you're working for, Donald Trump, does not really have firm principles or firm ideology. He's completely transactional. He's got a few gut impulses. And if you think that you can...
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
shift him on everything, you turn out like Steve Bannon. You don't stay in his inner staff circle. So he has learned how to operate in Trump world and how to survive in Trump world. And that's why he is one of the originals who still remains and is one of the most effective members of the current staff.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
His gut remains the same, but he's learned a lot. He's learned a lot about how to get what he wants. And knowing that you're not going to get everything you want, and knowing that you might have to set aside a fight for the moment because the person that is most important to you, Donald Trump, may not agree, and you know that you're a staffer and you work for him...
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And he's not going to get everything he wants this term, but he's going to learn. He's going to keep learning. And he might be blocked here or he might be blocked there. But if there's one thing that we know about him by this point, it's that he won't stop.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He was already attacking the left and making controversial anti-immigrant statements when he was in high school. And so much so that his classmates made a documentary about him singling him out as a future politician. and he runs for student government.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And when I heard what he said, I was outraged because that shows... Campaigning on the kids' rights to leave a mess so that the janitors should pick up their trash because they're paid to do so. Wow.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He complained about the school's Spanish language announcements, complained about, you know, the colourful festivals of minority cultures and described this decline, as he saw it, of a more traditional version of American education.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So all of this that you're seeing now was visible as far back as high school.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He is extremely hostile to immigrants. He has always, as far back as high school, rejected the idea that immigration is a net positive for America, and he's been very consistent in that.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And it's worth noting, yes, he grew up in this very liberal environment in Los Angeles, but it was also a moment of a huge influx of immigrants in California where there were many conservatives in the state who were railing against it. So it's not like his ideas were coming out of thin air. And he really plugged into this right-wing ecosystem.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He would call up Larry Elder, a very well-known right-wing commentator in California, who was an early mentor to Stephen Miller. He was obsessed with Rush Limbaugh, who obviously was a giant in right-wing broadcasting. And he was really rebelling against the cultural sensitivities of his high school. And you saw that continue through college. How so? What do you mean?
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So Stephen Miller goes to Duke University and something happens in 2006 that really defines his experience there.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
This extraordinary incident that happens at Duke where members of lacrosse team at the school were accused of rape.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And it became this huge national story. You had members of the faculty coming out, condemning them before anything was proven.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Defending these players at a time when... You know, the prevailing wisdom at Duke University was that these players were guilty.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And these lacrosse players were declared innocent. And this was a really important moment for him because here he was taking a contrarian position against the prevailing liberal orthodoxy, and he ended up being vindicated.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
He goes to Washington, he goes to Capitol Hill, and he ends up working for Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Senator Sessions, in the early 2010s, was... A pretty fringe figure in the Republican Senate conference. If you take your mind back to the 2012 election, Barack Obama beats Mitt Romney.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And when the Republican Party, after that election, sat down, you know, the grand figures in the party got in a room together and said, what happened? What do we need to change, etc. ? Their famous autopsy basically said, we need to be nicer to immigrants. We need to do more to reach out to Hispanics. And that was the prevailing wisdom on Capitol Hill among Republicans.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Yes, but very specifically by being more compassionate, quote unquote, when it came to immigration, that sentiment became operationalized in Congress. So what you had was the so-called gang of eight, which was a bipartisan group of senators who got together, and figured out a pathway to comprehensive immigration reform.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And you had Republicans like Marco Rubio played a really significant role in this bill. So they came up with legislation that sought a pathway to citizenship for millions of people, who are in the country illegally, and they also took some measures to tighten border security.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions identified this bill as the big fight that they were going to wage for the future of the party, for the future of the country, and Stephen Miller became...
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
kind of famous in Washington circles for haranguing reporters late at night with emails, with lurid stories about immigrants committing crimes, for working behind the scenes with conservative media, for working every lawmaker he could. And it really was a sort of David and Goliath in terms of the politics of it in Washington and the money.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So even Miller and Jeff Sessions at that time were very much a minority voice in the party among the elites in Washington. But They were far more in tune with the Republican voters, with the base.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Yes, and they were right. Because once they activated, you know, this opposition movement, these lawmakers in the House, their phones were being lit up by angry voters, angry constituents saying, do not do this. And the bill never went through the House. So they killed it.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Well, he's immensely powerful. I could make a case that he is one of, if not the most powerful, unelected people in America right now. He is Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, which, you know, may not sound that impressive, but to take all the jargon away, he is in charge of domestic policy. Full stop.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
No question. The Washington Republican establishment at that time saw Stephen Miller as an irritant and dismissed him. And, you know, it's interesting now, you know, when my colleagues, Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage, David Fahrenthold, and myself reported out this story, you know, you talk to people who were in influential positions back then, they can't believe where he's ended up.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
But that all changed when Donald Trump launched his campaign for president in 2015.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Well, it was almost a religious experience for him watching Donald Trump come down that escalator. Wow. Jeff Sessions was his vehicle at that time, but Jeff Sessions does not have the charisma to be a true national figure. Jeff Sessions was never going to win the presidency. Here is this celebrity...
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Donald Trump, every American knows who he is, gives this speech where he says that Mexico is sending rapists across the border. I mean, Stephen Miller could have written that speech. And it's this moment of exhilaration for Stephen Miller. He didn't know Donald Trump at that point. He wasn't wired into his inner circle. But he starts over a period of months
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
getting in touch with Donald Trump's team, offering ideas. And eventually he gets absorbed onto the Donald Trump team and they see immediately his value. He would stay up all night writing speeches. This was his whole life. It was all he cared about. He was obsessed, particularly with the immigration issue, but obsessed with getting Donald Trump elected.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And so he became this indispensable figure for Donald Trump.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
Exactly. And, you know, the other element was Trump trusts him. Trump has always been very paranoid about leakers around him and he's never seen Stephen that way. He's always viewed Stephen as someone he can completely trust.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
So Miller comes into government. He really doesn't know a lot about how the federal government works. He's super aggressive. He wants to get things done. He wants to close the border and expel immigrants and do all the things that they've been talking about on the campaign. But... does not necessarily have the wherewithal at that time to execute.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
One of the early stumbles was the travel ban against Muslim-majority countries. It was very sloppily drafted, poorly coordinated, and it ended up being struck down. They had to redraft it. They implement the infamous zero-tolerance policy where they separate parents from their children at the border. But after a period of bad media coverage, Donald Trump... reverses that order.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
And that was something that Stephen Miller had advocated for. And so Stephen Miller found himself thwarted at many levels throughout the first couple of years of the presidency. But by 2020, he had really gotten his footing. He'd learned a lot about where the levers of power were in the government. And by the end, they used COVID to effectively seal the southern border.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
They implement Title 42, which is to declare a public health emergency at the border, which basically gave them the ability to immediately turn people back.
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Stephen Miller’s Return to Power
That's right. And when Donald Trump leaves office in early 2021— Stephen Miller gets to work for the next four years planning what they would do in a second term if he ever retook the presidency and planning how they would get through any and all obstruction from the left for this return to power.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
You had people online scraping up information about her, ostensibly from her divorce, and making it public. This is what I mean by feral. You know, Brenna Bird, who's the popular attorney general of Iowa, she writes this opinion column in Breitbart News saying that Washington politicians are trying to obstruct Trump's administration. And she didn't mention Ernst, but her message was very clear.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
I mean, coming from someone of her stature in the state, that was a really big deal. And then you had the money side.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
So you have this dark money group that Elon Musk has used for political spending. That group starts running digital ads in Iowa.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Calling on people to urge their senator to vote for Hegseth. And no prizes for guessing which senator the ads were referring to. Right. So it's all of the above. It's the threat of big money coming in against you, you know, with Musk and his billionaire friends. It's people in the state that have real power, Brenna Byrd.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
And then it's the most influential figures on the right who have real followings and have the ability to activate the most intense faction within the Trump base. Very unpleasant. It makes your life miserable if you're a sitting senator and that's what comes down on you.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
That's right. And none of these people would say this, but it's absolutely a fact that when pressure campaigns like this happen, there's the fear of... some crazy supporter committing an act of violence or coming up to you and harassing you in person. I mean, it's a factor. It's a factor in this era.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
I mean, I've seen these pressure campaigns before from Trump's movement, and this might be the fastest effect that I've ever seen.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Within 72 hours after this campaign really kicked off, she meets with him again and she puts out this statement and her language was unrecognizable.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
He will continue, she says, to support the roles of both servicemen and women. As I support Pete through this process. And as I support Pete through this process, so that's very different. She's now saying she's supporting him through this process. The second half of the statement was even more remarkable.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
I look forward to a hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources. So those last three words, those are the talking points of the Trump team. I mean, to say a hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources, you're essentially setting up two categories. You're saying there are statements that are true and there are statements or accusations made by anonymous sources that are therefore false.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
And so by doing that, given that the accusations against Pete Hegseth are from anonymous sources, you are invalidating on its face the accusations against Pete Hegseth. The fact that she's willing to support me through this process means a lot. And pretty quickly, we saw Hegseth make some comments that indicate that he seems to believe he's got her vote.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Now, it's worth noting, in this statement, Hegseth also seemed to back off his earlier position about not supporting women in the military. Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women. And Ernst says this is based on a pledge he made to her in that second meeting.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
It's all a little vague, but essentially this is why she claims she's softening her position on him, that he's made concessions on issues that matter to her. And to be clear, she's still not coming right out and saying he absolutely has her vote, but she certainly seems to have reversed course and put herself in a situation where, at this point, it's very hard to imagine her backing out.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
She would, if she did that, be a pariah with the MAGA base. They would make sure of that. And just from her actions so far, it seems pretty clear that she wants to stay on the right side of the Trump movement.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Absolutely. And when I talk to people close to President-elect Trump and people who work for him, people on the outside, allies, they already see this as a resounding success. You know, they will say, look, who knows, maybe more accusations will come out against Pete Hexeth. Maybe we end up losing four senators and he goes down.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
But even if that happens, they see this as a cautionary tale for Republicans. They are putting Republicans on notice that they're not going to tolerate dissent. They're not going to tolerate opposition to Donald Trump anymore. during his return to Washington.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
And by making such a fight of this, by publicly forcing these senators to bend the knee, they are creating a template for what we're likely to see next year as Trump tries to pass legislation, as he inevitably does controversial things that will make some senators squeamish. The Trump team is sending out the message now there will be a very steep cost. if you go against Donald Trump.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Well, Jonathan, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Well, Trump himself is starting to have second thoughts about Hegseth. I was actually in Palm Beach two weeks ago when this is all happening, meeting with Trump officials, talking to advisors of his, and... I can't overstate to you how universal the view was in Trump's inner circle that Hegseth was done.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Donald Trump was criticizing him behind his back, saying, you know, he could have told me about all this stuff. You know, he was seeing the negative stories. He wasn't happy about them. And so Trump actually starts to think about picking a replacement for Hegseth. The ultimate sign that he's done with you. Totally. And he started to court Ron DeSantis.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
They didn't only defeat him. It was personal, as you say. And for many people on Trump's team, it's deeply personal. Susie Wiles, who's going to come in as Trump's chief of staff, used to work for Ron DeSantis, left on very bad terms with him. There are others on the team who used to work for him. None of them like Ron DeSantis. So...
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
As soon as Trump's advisers realise that he's actually serious about the DeSantis idea, there is a panic. Many people go into gear of how do we kill this? At the same time, there are others in Trump's orbit, some of the same people, but different people like Steve Bannon and others, who thought that...
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
There was actually something larger at play that if he allowed Pete Hegseth to be blocked by Senate Republicans, that would set the tone for the rest of his administration. That was the argument that they were making to Trump indirectly, in some cases directly. But basically what they were saying was, you already let one person go.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Matt Gaetz, right? Trump put up Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, which horrified Republicans. And within a very short period of time, it became clear that he wasn't going to have the votes and he quit. People like Steve Bannon and others in Trump's orbit thought that was a really bad message. They thought at a minimum, strategically, they should have kept Matt Gaetz in because...
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Him soaking up all the media attention and controversy actually is useful because Trump has a whole bunch of other controversial picks and they can slide through with less media attention. But also letting him quit was a bad idea in terms of setting the terms of Trump's return to Washington. in terms of the power template, in terms of Trump saying, I'm the king around here.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
So what they wanted to do with Hegseth, they decided very quickly, like within 24 hours, was we're going to turn him into a cause. We're going to make him sort of a Brett Kavanaugh type figure. And we are going to make this a litmus test for Republicans defying Donald Trump. And if you dare step out of line... the mob is going to come for you, the online mob, the pressure, the constituents.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
We are going to make you toxic with the Republican base.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Well, two things happened. One, Pete Hegseth and his team decide they're going to abandon the sort of traditional Washington playbook of keeping your head down, talking to senators, but not making this a huge spectacle. Trump wanted to see a spectacle. He picked Hegseth in the first place because he liked watching him on Fox News. So Trump encouraged Hegseth to get out there.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Hegseth does these sort of defiant interviews and performances.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
His mother goes on Fox & Friends.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
in this highly unusual performance.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Where she renounces a letter she sent him in 2018, where she took him to task for his treatment of women.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
Right. And then the second part is basically, you know, it's an intimidation strategy. It's we need to get our most powerful allies in terms of who has the biggest following with the Republican base, who are most effective at whipping up anger and emotion in the base, and set them onto the wavering senators. And Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa became their number one target.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
She was seen as the biggest problem. So all pressure was focused on her. Obviously others too, but she was the focal point.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
You had influential MAGA figures with huge audiences. I mean, these people have millions and millions of followers between them.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
People like Kirk were threatening to recruit a primary challenger against Ernst. Remember, she's going to be running again in 2026, so this carries real weight.
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Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue.
I mean, it's feral. Nothing is off the table. Get on the phone and start tweeting at Joni Ernst. They sent threatening posts on social media. They urged their listeners on their radio shows to pressure Ernst and to call her congressional office. Get on the phone. Folks, this stuff matters. And that then kicks off this whole movement, and it gets really personal and close to home.