It’s Stephen Miller’s Show Now
The most powerful guy in Trump’s ear has a plan for how to respond to the death of Charlie Kirk. You’re not going to like it.
Kash Patel’s lonely one-man crusade to convince everybody he actually did a great job hunting down Charlie Kirk’s killer continues. “I made the decision to surge so many resources,” he told Fox & Friends this morning. “I had to expedite the process . . . I made the tough calls . . . I came in and I accelerated that process.” All told, during Patel’s 15 minute interview, we counted ten mentions of the word “my,” a whopping 43 mentions of the word “I,” and 13 mentions of the word “I’m.” On, and four mentions of the word “me.”
That’s a lot of self-defense. Whether it’s enough to tamp down the growing MAGA dissatisfaction with Patel’s handling of the investigation remains to be seen. Happy Monday.
Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
by Andrew Egger
Despite his unassuming title of “deputy chief of staff,” Stephen Miller is one of the most powerful men in America. His boss, Donald Trump, is undisciplined and unfocused, prone to launching major initiatives (mass deportation, D.C. crime crackdown) before wandering off to get distracted by fripperies (redecorating the White House, micromanaging the Kennedy Center). Miller, by contrast, is the always-on attack dog, single-mindedly scheming up new ways to translate the president’s vague pronouncements into applications of real government power. As one top official at a major university in the crosshairs of this administration told us: he is the point person on all of it; his office, the real power center inside the White House.
How Miller has been talking in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination should have everybody worried.
Last Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after the shooting, Miller tweeted out a thesis statement. “There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country,” he wrote, “which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.” This ideology has “one unifying thread,” he added: “the insatiable thirst for destruction.”
“It is an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence,” Miller went on. “The fate of millions depends on the defeat of this wicked ideology.”
What is this ideology? Radical leftism, of course—defined, in our deeply polarized age, as anything outside the bounds of true-blue, salt-of-the-earth, God-fearing MAGA patriotism.
How does Miller intend to defeat this ideology? We don’t have to guess. In a Friday appearance on Sean Hannity, Miller made his plans clear: Smash every institution of the left with the power of the state.
“The last message that Charlie Kirk gave me before he joined his creator in heaven was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” Miller ranted. “And we are going to do that, under President Trump’s leadership. I don’t care how. It could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection. But we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, that are committing acts of wanton violence.”
Miller made a promise: “The power of law enforcement, under President Trump’s leadership, will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”
That’s an interesting way of putting it, isn’t it? Miller’s promise, made in public, is to bring down the fist of the state on radical left organizations, to take away their money and their power—and then, for those who have broken the law, to take away their freedom as well. Why should the ones who haven’t broken the law lose their money and their power? Well, that’s obvious, Miller seems to say: Because we’ve decreed that they’re domestic terrorists.
The crucial thing to keep in mind here is that Miller is not talking about Kirk’s assassin—or even about groups the FBI is investigating to determine whether that assassin acted alone. Instead, he is referring primarily to those Americans who posted callous, cruel, or even just nonchalant things online in the wake of Kirk’s assassination. And he’s not talking just about people on the federal government’s payroll but everyday citizens going about their lives. “In recent days, we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority—child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov’t workers, even DOD employees—have been deeply and violently radicalized,” Miller wrote on X yesterday. “The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”
Miller’s argument is thus very explicit. Those putting their worst foot forward online after Kirk’s murder weren’t just displaying a lack of empathy that characterizes so much of our ultra-polarized, social media age. They were the deliberate outcome of a specific liberal plot—an “organized ecosystem of indoctrination” on the part of specific, knowable “radical left organizations” that are chockablock with “domestic terrorists.” And the Trump administration is preparing to use any criminal pretext available to take these terrorists down.
Many of the posts exulting in Kirk’s death that have gone viral in recent days have indeed been sickeningly indecent. But America’s remarkably robust free speech protections extend even to sickeningly indecent speech. You think social media posts are bad? In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that it was legal for Westboro Baptist Church to picket the funerals of gay servicemen while holding signs like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “You’re Going to Hell.” In the land of the free, you take the good with the bad. Miller plainly seeks to sweep that all away.
We have arrived at an extremely dangerous moment. Trump’s remarkably unchained performance as president so far in his second term might suggest to some that he is just doing whatever he wants, regardless of law or public opinion. The former might be true; the latter is a more complicated question. Trump has in fact backed quietly away from White House actions when they have proven dramatically unpopular: his plan to house American criminals in torture prisons in El Salvador, his “Liberation Day” tariffs, his invasion of Chicago (for now), the Great Elon Experiment.
Under ordinary circumstances, an explicit and ostentatious political purge like the one Miller is threatening would likely land in this range. But it’s hard to overstate how freaked out U.S. conservatives have been over the assassination of Kirk—and how shaken they are over the cruelest responses to that assassination that have originated from leftists online.
Those cruel responses have originated from a small army of online shitposters, not prominent liberal thinkers or Democratic elected officials. But for conservatives it has felt like confirmation of what they’re hearing from their own side’s politicians and influencers: The left straight up wants you dead. Miller is only happy to egg this on. And for whatever one thinks of the guy, he’s proven to be shrewd and Machiavellian in his use of power. How much leash is he going to be given for his purge? That’s the chilling question we hope we don’t have to find out.
A quick programming note: JVL will go live today with Heather Cox Richardson at 3 p.m. EDT on Substack. They'll pick up the discussion from a recent Triad on whether Trump is the inevitable culmination of conservatism. Join them live here. We’ll send an email as they get started and post the replay on the site.
The Basic Rights of Trans Americans
by William Kristol
We’ll observe Constitution Day later this week, on September 17. It isn’t a major American holiday, overshadowed as it is by July 4, Independence Day. The priority of July 4 is fitting and proper—for as Lincoln observed, having in mind the passage from Proverbs 25:11, the Constitution is the picture of silver that frames and safeguards the Declaration’s apple of gold.
September 17 marks the date of the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. But of course that wasn’t the end of the story. The Constitution then had to be ratified by each state, and that was a complicated and contentious affair. Rhode Island, the last of the original thirteen states to ratify the Constitution, only did so on May 29, 1790—more than a year after George Washington had been sworn in as our first president.
In August 1790, President Washington visited Rhode Island to acknowledge the state’s recent (if somewhat tardy!) ratification of the Constitution. Among the dignitaries who greeted him was Moses Seixas, warden of Newport’s Touro Synagogue. In his welcoming remarks, Seixas expressed thanks that his people, elsewhere deprived because of their religion of “the invaluable rights of free Citizens,” lived in this new nation under a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
The next day, Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport to thank Seixas. But he used his public letter to make a broader point to all his fellow citizens. Indeed, he used some of Seixas’ language to do so. After thanking the congregants for their “cordial welcome,” Washington explained that:
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.
Washington concluded by expressing the hope that here “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Jews were then a tiny percentage of the population of the United States–something like 2,500 souls out of almost 4 million. But Washington wanted to emphasize that the members of this small and previously persecuted minority were entitled, here in the United States, to the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as everyone else.
Two hundred and thirty five years later, there is in this nation a minority group whose rights are under severe attack: transgender individuals. We have a presidential administration which seeks to curtail those individuals’ rights. We have a powerful political movement that wishes to make them afraid.
This is wrong. It’s also un-American. Other Americans don’t have to understand or sympathize with transgender individuals. But we ought to defend their basic human rights. We ought to do so out of a simple sense of justice. But we also ought to do so out of a sense of pride that our nation exemplifies an “enlarged and liberal policy” for mankind, and that here “there shall be none to make him afraid.”
One could call that American greatness.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Trump Hasn’t Invaded Chicago, But the City Is Still Rattled… ICE has had a chilling effect on the businesses, schools, and communities, writes ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO in Huddle Masses.
Mom and Dad Are Fighting… In The Opposition, LAUREN EGAN reports that Harris and Biden alumni are clashing over the former VP’s book excerpt.
The Real Reason Trump Is a Threat to the Economy… It’s not just the agenda. It’s also the shambolic, vibes-based way he’s pursuing it, argues JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown.
Trump’s Exploitation of the Charlie Kirk Assassination… On The Bulwark on Sunday, JAY NORDLINGER joins BILL KRISTOL to discuss the legacy of human rights struggles, the dangers of demagoguery, and the role of leaders in times of crisis.
From Free Markets to State Control: How Conservatives Sold Out… On How to Fix It, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, JOHN AVLON and libertarian thinker NICK GILLESPIE dive into America’s rising tide of political violence and reflect on how reckless rhetoric contributes to it.
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Quick Hits
THE DELAY GAME: The war in Ukraine grinds on, Russian drones are straying into Poland, and Donald Trump is, once again, not happy. While he has mused that the drone incursion may have been a mistake (nope, says Poland), he has also announced via social media that he’s “ready to do major Sanctions on Russia.” But it comes with a catch: first, all NATO nations must stop buying Russian oil.
This is a worthy goal. But you know who in NATO still imports oil from Russia? Aside from Turkey, it’s Russia-friendly (and Trump-friendly) Hungary and Slovakia, and they’re unlikely to stop to help put the screws on Putin. (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands import small quantities of liquified natural gas.) Maybe JD Vance can call his buddy Viktor Orbán. Until then, Trump’s ultimatum looks a lot like another excuse not to act, especially since he’s back to blaming anyone but Putin. It’s “Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, a Russian drone has strayed into a second NATO country: Romania. It’s almost as if Trump’s tepid response were encouraging Putin to try again. As Trump would once have said: “Weak!”
—Cathy Young
SORRY ABOUT ALL THAT: Less than a week after ICE clumsily sparked a major diplomatic incident with South Korea by rounding up hundreds of Korean nationals at a Hyundai-LG battery factory in Georgia, Donald Trump is trying to do a little damage control. Here he was on Truth Social yesterday:
When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other “things,” come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land. If we didn’t do this, all of that massive Investment will never come in the first place. . . . I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own “game,” sometime into the not too distant future!
It was as close as anyone is likely to get to an acknowledgment that the raid—which was predicated on an ICE warrant for four Hispanic workers at the plant—had potentially caused major damage to another Trump initiative: wheedling foreign countries into building factories here.
He’ll have a lot of convincing to do. At least some of the detained workers were in America legally. And as they began arriving back in South Korea Friday and sharing their stories of the outrageous conditions of their confinement, anger over the incident mounted.
“They went there to help the U.S. The U.S. side also wanted them to work there,” one detained worker’s wife told Reuters. “But now they are being treated like criminals . . . since they’re not actual criminals, the fact they were taken away like that, I think that’s a real problem.”
UPON FURTHER REFLECTION…: Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade apologized yesterday after suggesting on his show last week that homeless people with mental illness should be executed by the state. Kilmeade’s offending comments actually came during a Wednesday show. But the clip went viral over the weekend. In it, the show hosts were discussing the recent Charlotte murder of a young woman, Iryna Zarutska, by a man with a lengthy criminal rap sheet and a history of mental illness. One host, Lawrence Jones, advanced an argument about the need to offer mentally ill homeless people who had committed lesser crimes a choice: treatment or jail.
Kilmeade just decided to go there: “Or involuntary lethal injection, or something,” he replied. “Just kill ’em.”
In the moment, the hosts moved on without comment on what Kilmeade had said. Back on the air yesterday for the first time since the remark went viral, however, Kilmeade apologized for what he called “that extremely callous remark.” “I am obviously aware that not all mentally ill homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina,” he said, “and that so many people deserve our empathy and compassion.”
“Sorry I said we should kill the homeless” is a low bar to clear, sure. But these days it’s good to see anybody clearing any bar at all.
Cheap Shots
Somehow we got through this newsletter without giving any plaudits to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, whose heartfelt Friday plea for turning down the political temperature across the board was a ray of light in a thunderstorm of rage. So we’ll give him this one:
A note of caution not to go overboard here with praise for Gov Cox. Yes he's clearly trying to keep the temperature down and for that he should be applauded. He is also, however, willing to use that temperate voice to support the Trump/MAGA narrative that all violence in this country is perpetrated and encouraged by Democrats/the left. Listen closely to his recent comment:
He said Roninson had "leftist ideology" "Mr. Cox, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” described the suspect, Tyler Robinson, as a “very normal young man” who appeared to have been “radicalized” some time after he dropped out of college and moved back to his hometown..."
The message is that Robinson was "normal" when he grew up in a gun loving, Christian, Republican home but "leftist ideology" "radicalized" him (making him not-normal).
Beware Those who carry damaging messages is smooth, soft, modulated speech are just as damaging as raging abusers like Stephen Miller.
>>> "Radical leftism, of course—defined, in our deeply polarized age, as anything outside the bounds of true-blue, salt-of-the-earth, God-fearing MAGA patriotism."
I think it's important to keep sight of the fact that Miller, et al., are pretty careful to not get overly specific in their remonstrations of the "they/them" that are out to get America, and to not be overly specific about the boundaries of the "radical left." I think we could assume we know who they mean, but the thing is they will reserve the right to pull the rug out from under any individual or group as needed, to exile them from the volk and into enemy status. That's how their whole fascist world view works.
For Miller, et al., it's way less important to be consistently principled, or even to profess to believe the same set of facts on Tuesday as one did on Monday. The only thing that matters is loyalty, preference, and deference to the in-group, and total opposition and dominance over the outgroup.