How Kash Patel and Pam Bondi became Slaves to Stephen Miller

[erronis]

https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/08/how-kash-patel-and-pam-bondi-became-slaves-to-stephen-miller/

One of the many excellent comments:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/08/how-kash-patel-and-pam-bondi-became-slaves-to-stephen-miller/#comment-1113940

This administration foregrounds Sméagols, so poisoned by the pursuit of power that they are visibly losing their moorings–not just in reason (hardly valued by MAGA) but also in control of their self-presentation. They come across on TV as flummoxed and flailing phonies: Ka$h Patel putting the toad back in toadie, Pam Bondi shrieking like a scripted banshee at any senator with the temerity to ask her a question. Stephen Miller retains a tenuous hold on the role of Gollum, with the gilt-thin veneer of control that permits him to scheme. Trump? Trump is a creature of another opus, the one he believes himself to be inscribing into history but that in fact we are all editing day by day by day.

And then there is Anthony Salisbury. His name (just that) sent me looking. Naughty Anthony (“Tony” to his friends) has a penchant for letting operational details (“Op Sec” to studs) slip public, whether via his participation in a Signal chat–yes, THAT one–or by text-musing about sending the 82nd Airborne into US cities with Cuddle Buddy Pete. Multiple bystanders got photos of the texts. Salisbury’s previous job? DHS Investigations. (This may explain why HSI does no ‘vestigating these days.)

I suspect Tony Loose Lips was brought inside by Miller NOT because of his keen intelligence, and not even because of insults like “douche canoe.” I believe what truly appealed to the White House about Mr. Salisbury was his last name. Admit it: Can’t you imagine the hero of a British romance with that name? Emphasis on *British*–because never in our history has an administration wallowed in such adolescent Anglophilia. Trump with the King! And in 80 years no US government has veered closer to the brand of Teutonically tinged Anglophilia that flared here in the 1930s, and flared monstrously brighter across the pond.

It’s not ancestor worship. It’s hate. Dressed up as Downton Abbey.