Stephen Miller Can't Be Granted The Presumption Of Good Faith
Like any real-deal fascist, Miller doesn't care about anything
Everyone in the president's orbit speaks to an audience of one when they stand before the cameras with their mangled faces and address outrage-starved cable news audiences that are spoon fed political-drama slop because some cigar-chomping executive with a hundred grand in hair plugs and six mistresses thinks that's the only way to sell ads.
They're all talking to the Big Boy in the White House because all he does is sit there like a melting stick of butter and watch cable news. It's how he experiences the world, along with the brain-breaking AI slop his wife Natalie makes for him.
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Not Stephen Miller though. Yes, he knows the boss is watching when Miller appears like the goddamn Babadook on your TV screen and screeches about migrants and the beleaguered white working class man and the apocalyptic vision he wishes for the United States. Miller is also talking to his fellow edge lords living in the swamps of the fascist internet, the fetid swamps that birthed Miller into the national consciousness, all the way to the right hand of absolute, unchecked power, as John Roberts might define the presidency.
Denny Carter
Miller, the new White House chief of staff, plays the bad-faith game well because he was forged in the bad-faith fire: Thousands of black-pilled young men who came of age during Gamergate – the origin story of the MAGA movement – and learned to pretend to care about things to manipulate the press, infuriate their enemies, and position themselves as victims, for a victim can do no wrong. Miller and his black-pilled brethren learned exactly how to weaponize the left's good-faith concern for people and causes against them.
Look at me, Miller will say in so many words to the void-seeking fascists on the X platform. I'm the fucking White House chief of staff because they think I care about shit. Miller does not actually care about anything; he is a nihilist with fuzzy politics, just like everyone in any fascist movement worth its salt. Miller being appointed chief of staff is perhaps the ultimate victory of the soul-dead online movement that has brought our representative democracy to the brink.
We're almost there boys, I imagine Miller telling the fascist toads posting racist memes on Elon Musk's social media website. We're almost to the void!
Denny Carter
Mainstream media outlets, treating Miller like any other chief of staff, are going to grant him the presumption of good faith as the president's right-hand man in the coming months or years, depending on when regime officials start fleeing to Qatar or Saudi Arabia or wherever else they might avoid accountability for their many crimes against the republic.
Miller will pretend to care about the safety and well being of American families, and he will say the only way to do this is to round up anyone who so much as resembles an immigrant – not the Afrikaners though – and disappear them to some developing nation where they will be murdered or starve to death.
Miller will pretend to care about the rule of law – which has not existed since the moment his boss was sworn in for a second term – and call legitimate, above-board Democratic congressional investigations into the regime's crime spree nothing more than a personal vendetta against the president and those who pretend to love the United States.
Miller will pretend to care about the sanctity of Congress when the president calls for investigations of his perceived congressional enemies, most of them Black or brown or women, or some combination of those three.
And the political press, as BFT readers surely know by now, will be more than happy to treat Miller as a normal chief of staff with normal goals and politics. They will grant him the presumption of good faith and it will be the job of Democrats and their allies to rebut that nonsense and say no, Miller doesn't care about anything except feeding the demon that occupies him, which feeds on hate, the uncut kind, the pure shit.
I would hope, in the coming weeks or months, that those with at least fleeting interest in defending American democracy will bring up Miller's 2025 cable news interview slip-up, the one in which he referenced plenary authority, or executive power without limit. As a fellow millennial white guy, I know Miller better than I want to, and I am convinced he's going to push the concept of plenary authority as White House chief of staff. This is his reason for being.
It'll be up to the massive Democratic congressional majorities, the regular folks who elected them, and the civic and business leaders who are now going woke to stand up and say no way man, get that shit out of here. You're going to jail, buddy. It's an outcome Miller reportedly worries about quite a bit.
Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social
