He didn't write this BS.
Stephen Miller did.— Joe Bacon (@josephebacon.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Every pot will find its lid, my Nana used to say, and for the sake of all innocent bystanders it’s probably a good thing that these two (three?) found each other. Per Wired, “Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Being Aided by a Trumpworld Power Couple”:
When President Donald Trump’s aides and advisers relay concerns about Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government, they’re often given what’s intended to be a reassuring answer: Don’t worry, Stephen and Katie Miller will take care of it.
As Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force dismantle key parts of the government and plan to cut the workforce at federal agencies by half or more, the Millers have become pivotal figures in Musk’s orbit, multiple sources tell WIRED. The couple has been tasked as intermediaries, bringing news about Musk’s latest targets and communications strategies to the rest of the White House, say members of Trump’s inner circle and people outside the administration who know them personally. Just over a month into the new administration, they have been privately projecting themselves as two pairs of steady hands at the till.
Stephen Miller is the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser; two sources described his current role as that of a prime minister. His wife, Katie Miller, is a special government employee who functions as the top communications official at DOGE. She is also on the payroll of the firm P2 Public Affairs, The Wall Street Journal reported, which has ties to Musk and several alumni of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign.
Stephen was a senior adviser in Trump’s first term, and an architect of the administration’s anti-immigration platform, including advocating for the policy of separating migrant children from their families. Katie served in the first Trump administration as deputy press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security during Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure before ascending to the role of press secretary in 2019 and communications director in 2020 for then-vice president Mike Pence. The Millers were married in 2020.
Katie Miller, like many people associated with DOGE, is, as a special government employee, limited to working in the federal government for no more than 130 days in any given 365-day period and subject to less stringent ethics requirements than permanent employees. She was assigned to run communications for Musk prior to the transition, a White House official tells WIRED, beginning her journey with Musk as a “comms sherpa.” Now she has become the richest man in the world’s guide to life in Washington and integral to the high-velocity, high-volume barrage of cuts to the government’s workforce and spending—many of them being questioned in the courts as to their legality—that have come to dominate Trump’s first month back in office.
Her relationship with Musk, the White House official says, is central to DOGE’s interactions with the rest of the White House. She’s the key intermediary, delivering the DOGE message of the day to the rest of the administration. She’s also the one to deliver any sensitive or bad news to Musk, says the official.
The Republicans who spoke to WIRED for this story all requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. They are all generally supportive of the DOGE initiatives but share varying degrees of concern about Musk harming Trump’s image and felt compelled to speak up out of an urge to protect the boss…
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller has, along with Project 2025 coauthor and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, became one of Musk’s closest allies in the administration, The New York Times reported earlier this month. WIRED has learned that the relationship is far closer, and more complicated, than has been previously known publicly.
In many ways, Musk’s targeting of federal agencies is perfectly in sync with the aims of Miller, who has championed DOGE’s work internally and even helped in making a lot of it possible. (In public, Miller has equated federal workers with “radical left Communists” and “criminal cartels.”) Still, sources tell WIRED that Trumpworld is more comfortable with Musk taking the heat for the recent federal cuts rather than the less famous—and, in their view, far less telegenic—Miller.
Yet through their actions so far, the Millers and Musk have developed a MAGA version of the Pet Shop Boys adage from the song “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”: You’ve got the brawn / I’ve got the brains. Stephen Miller’s knowledge of the federal apparatus, Katie Miller’s contacts on Capitol Hill, and the couple’s good standing among Trump loyalists, coupled with Musk’s relentless ambition and effectively infinite resources, made the scale of the DOGE government takeover possible. Musk is not the independent actor he’s often portrayed as and taken to be, in other words, but is rather carrying out actions essentially in concert with the man to whom the president has delegated much of the day-to-day work of governance…
The involvement of the Millers is also one of the many reasons why Trumpworld sources say they now don’t currently see an implosion between Trump and Musk happening anytime soon even though, as WIRED previously reported, rifts have already emerged within the president’s inner circle over the centibillionaire’s level of power.
Still, Musk’s relationship with the Millers has become a subject of great intrigue in Washington as DOGE continues to wreak havoc on the federal government. Little is known about how often they interact outside of work and how the relationship grew over the late stages of the campaign into the transition…
Stephen Miller has taken over the Justice Department messaging strategy, with sometimes embarrassing results
www.cnn.com/2025/03/03/p…— Federal Employee News (@fednews.bsky.social) March 3, 2025 at 5:16 PM
anyways, I don't have the energy to go dig up one of my old threads about why Stephen Miller's shock and awe strategy was so dumb, but it's pretty much this: They are degrading the government and the agencies at the same time they are trying to do LOTS OF THINGS.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 4:25 PM
They have no lawyers. They can't deal with the number of suits being filed in every court in the country. Stephen Miller twirling his moustache and saying "We're going to catch them off guard and blitz them" is basically a Battle of the Bulge like strategy.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 4:25 PM
They're now wildly overextended, have no staff to defend themselves, and a ketamine addled lunatic is taking a chainsaw to whatever services he think he can outsource to his companies.
These people are not very smart, and things are firmly out of hand.— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 4:25 PM
MagdaInBlack
I first read this article when it came out, and I just wanted to barf at the ” power couple.”
Thank you for posting this, A.L., despite my desire to barf =-)
Professor Bigfoot
As I said downstairs, the courts continue to rule against the sonsabitches.
If they want to douse themselves in kerosene and wave around lighted matches, why should we help them?”
Why should we give them more villains to parade across Fox and OANN and the rest?*
<sigh>
(*of course they will anyway, but that’s not the point— why help them at all?)
Bupalos
With qualifications, this is all good journalism. But Christ on a cracker, “the boss” needs to be in quotes here:
“and felt compelled to speak up out of an urge to protect the boss…”
Bupalos
I don’t think there will be be a musk/Trump split anymore. Apparently part of narcissistic personality disorder includes “narcissistic submission” and it actually sound like Trump/Musk are a perfect match for one another in this sense.
Steve LaBonne
Master chess players don’t eat the chess pieces.
Lily
Why 3rd person ? Psychosis. Or just stressed narcissism.
TBone
Deep clench is what my jaw and fists did all by themselves and I had to stop reading so my eyeballs wouldn’t melt from the burning fury of rage. Nazis by any other name smell as putrid.
I had to go read WuTang for a minute. Here’s a good throwdown on Elno (scroll down for the zinger):
https://bsky.app/profile/wutangforchildren.bsky.social/post/3ljqdgv45r22t
Seems some CIA “black sites” were “inadvertently” exposed…
And then this for sweetness
https://bsky.app/profile/wutangforchildren.bsky.social/post/3ljps4saaoc2e
And I can see again
Soprano2
Things like this are depressing to me, because I think about what we could have had if so many people hadn’t bought into all the lies and had a desire to go back to 2019. So many people seem to want a strongman to fix everything they think is wrong in their lives, it’s distressing. I guess many Americans have become that childish.
Ruckus
I’m facing a real problem federal government wise.
I have a VA appointment next week to pick up my hearing aid and I have no idea if there will even be people working there. I’ve called today but there is ALWAYS a long wait to get an answer and now the clinic I need is closed. The hearing aid was ordered a month ago (normal time order to delivery) but now, am I going to be able to get it or did the clinic workers/doctors get fired (laid off – yeah right)?
And my situation is well let’s face it, minimal, compared with lots of other humans that use, get paid for working, do all the stuff that a nation with over 340 million citizens need. Now I’m sure in a disaster (not like the one we are currently in…) there could be problems. But this isn’t an earthquake, or a strike, or anything resembling anything fucking normal.
Not even close.
And NONE OF THIS BULLSHIT IS IN ANY WAY NORMAL. Even for rethuglicans.
This is one moronic asshole and the world’s richest jack off.
I’ve of course been mad from the get go about shitforbrains but as always when moronic and uber wealthy assholes are making, well not decisions but completely fucking idiotic, wrong, worse than useless guesses at how they can fuck up everything for over 340+ million humans, that work and pay taxes for at least one of those idiots to be in charge…………….
TBone
@Soprano2: regerts
Betcha you don’t feel as bad as that female who had TRUMP tattooed on her forehead and then had a Go Fund Me for tattoo removal.
You’re welcome.
Jackie
@Lily:
Bingo! The FFOTUS talks about himself in third person quite frequently.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: 🎯
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
Naw, they were ALWAYS that infantile.
And seemingly got dropped on their noggins as infants.
TBone
I read this story part way before today and couldn’t finish it then either. GAH.
HopefullyNotcassandra
There are now 101 lawsuits filed against his Oranganity.
DOJ does not have enough lawyers.
Mike Johnson’s chief of staff will be prosecuted (by law) by the elected DC district attorney, not the joke named Martin who cosplays as a henchman to Scarface while moonlighting as the AUSA for DC.
The over extension of these “stable geniuses” is one of the (funnier) things happening now that helps keep me calm so I can carry right on.
TBone
@HopefullyNotcassandra: come sit by me, please, any old time! Oranganity FTW!
TONYG
@MagdaInBlack: I remember when Stephen Miller got married asking myself “What woman would marry that asshole?”. I guess the answer is: “A woman who is just as repulsive as he is.”. Maybe true of Cheryl Hines and RFK Junior also.
Gloria DryGarden
Did anyone listen to the video in mistermix s post earlier today? I am interested in discussing it. Very moved. I need to listen a second time, because I tried to understand the French ( I’m not very good) and read the English at the same time.
M. malhuret makes a ton of great points and speaks about what needs to happen. He even makes statements of faith that our (USA) resilience and protests will start to keep a grasp on our democracy. Maybe that’s the part that makes me break out sobbing. Or perhaps it’s because he lays out the gravity of what Europe and its Allies need to do. He just nails it.
My closest friend who’ll talk politics has a broken phone, and I’m feeling quite desperate.
There have been so many pieces of huge news, for 6 weeks straight, and every bit of it, nearly, has been such a fucking big deal. It’s like a tsunami.
MagdaInBlack
@TONYG: And they have reproduced….3 times.
Joy in FL
@Gloria DryGarden: I listened to the speech and read the subtitles. It was an awesome speech.
I would talk with you about it.
Old School
While I wouldn’t describe Musk as “telegenic”, I must admit “more telegenic than Stephen Miller” is a very very very low bar.
Ebony
@Soprano2: Unfortunately it is not surprising to me that many Americans are attractive to strong man politics, because many states, such as Georgia are under the yoke of strong man politics. Many people in these states don’t know better.
Jackie
@Old School:
I LOL’d out loud in a very inappropriate place when I read that – and wasn’t in the right place to explain my out of place laughter.
Citizen Alan
Wilson Heath
Since the Ides of March is on a weekend this year, one wonders if disgruntled feds under RTO orders are going to have an observed day during the work week.
kwAwk
My thought for today are that we still have 20 months before the next election. We’re in the minority in all three branches of government. It is going to take some long term strategic thinking to right the ship.
We’ve tried the method of spazzing out to everything Trump says or does for 10 years, and we still haven’t vanquished Trump. Might it not be time to try something different? We can bitch about the leadership in the House because they were trying to get people to not react to Trump, but really, what did it do? There is nothing Trump is better at than playing the victim.
When I see the endless stories of Trump voters online who regret their vote, the common them is that they liked Trump’s notion of putting America first, but I never thought he’d actually do X. X could be target immigrant families. X could be start a trade war. X could be abandon Ukraine. X could be enact Project 2025.
The truth is really not that they didn’t think he would do them, it’s that they thought we, the left and the center, would stop Trump from doing those things, as we’ve done in the past. But things are different this time Trump didn’t take a cabinet of insiders rather he has a bunch of Fox news goons actually believe in his bullshit, and he’s 25th amendment proofed his cabinet.
So where are we then. If we have the courage of our convictions, that Trump’s ideas are as bad as we say they are, perhaps we need to let things play out a bit and let the American people get a good dose of what Trump’s bad policies are. His stupid trade wars. His isolating us from our allies. His attacks on SS, Medicare and Medicaid. Some of these people do need to learn the FAFO lesson. We warned people and Trump is as bad as we said he was.
Lastly, I’d love for someone in the Washington Press corps to start asking Trump for updates on his progress of finding the people who rigged the 2020 election and prosecuting them. It is important for now and in the future for people to realize what a manipulative bullshit story that really was.