Bulwark Takes - Elon and Stephen Miller Are Combining Forces?!

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Tim Miller and Jake Lahut discuss his Wired article about Stephen and Katie Miller being the liaisons between DOGE and the administration. Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Being Aided by a Trumpworld Power Couple https://www.wired.com/story/katie-stephen-miller-elon-musk-takeover/

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. We had a new story just drop at Wired. It's a headline, Elon Musk takeover is being aided by a Trump world power couple. It's Stephen and Katie Miller. Stephen Miller is the quote prime minister, sources say, and his wife is the Doge Combs guru, and they are liaising between the White House and everybody else in Republican Washington. The man behind the story is Jake LaHutt of Wired, and I got him here right now. I wanted to talk to him about that. So, you know, I mean, in case people weren't concerned enough

about what's happening, Prime Minister Stephen Miller is not exactly, you know, bringing a lot of calm. No. It's intended as a reassuring message internally, but that it is not in reality. I mean, I learned a couple of new things reporting on this story. One of them is that Katie Miller actually was detailed to do comms for Elon prior to the transition.

This is according to a White House official. She also was detailed. I believe there's a political pro story on it at the time to do RFK juniors flacking in some capacity. But this, I don't think, was previously known. I also learned that, one, there's kind of a two-way street, if you will, with her role on the comm side of Doge. And it is, I think the relationship between Steven and Elon was understood to be at least, you know, chummy beforehand, but this is a little different when it comes to Katie. So she not only is reeling the Doge, you know, message of the day and to the extent they

can provide accurate updates on what they're doing, but she's also channeling requests, traffic issues back to Musk when necessary. And, you know, that would involve more sensitive conversations and having to give the guy bad news. I don't know really what it looks like beyond that or what their social situation is. But we do have a source in the story who knows the couple personally. And he said, if you can learn any, sorry, if he said, if you can find out anything about Stephen Miller's social life,

I don't want to know the answer. Yeah. I don't want to know anything about Stephen Miller's social life either. I am intrigued though, that I guess the dynamic that the story lays out, just kind of sum it up is that, you know, there are a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill and throughout the government who like directionally like Elon, you know there are a lot of republicans on capitol hill and throughout the government who

like directionally like elon you know like the fact that he wants to break things up like the fact that he's dark maga right like but i have some like concerns about the way that he's going about it right because they're they're getting the phone calls like they're hearing from constituents like what the fuck like i got fired or my friend governor like i got this project got cut and um and elon doesn't really know how government works i mean i had a source tell me that elon did not know that there were two houses of two different houses of congress until like relatively recently i don't know whether that's true or a joke i'm not a real reporter like you but like elon doesn't know would not be great. He doesn't know his ass from his elbow

about the government is the point. Definitely, I think it falls squarely under the description of like a Johnny come lately. Yeah, sure. A lot of it. Yeah, and so I guess these people, the direction like Elon, that have concerns about the execution,

the story indicates that, you know, the Trump world is saying, okay, don't worry. You can talk to Stephen. Stephener is going to manage this tiger yes and it gets tricky with like okay are they there in like a guardrail capacity and you know there are some sources who told me about you know trying to keep elon sort of coloring within the lines and all these kind of euphemisms for like i don't't know, not breaking the law, maybe. But I think the thing that is a little deeper here is just the level of rapport and adding to that some tensions with I got to give a shout out to Josh Dawsey and co. I think Ryan Barber was also on that byline where they had a story about Katie Miller being on the payroll at P2 Public Affairs, which you and some other sickos watching this or listening to this might be aware of, which is basically a DeSantis aligned firm kind clearly is a sign of the DeSantis world influence getting – just having more sway around Elon and that the linchpin of all this is this couple. I guess my question is like – and it doesn't really seem like Stephen Miller and Katie are the types of people that could control eclan or that they are socially aligned i mean steven is i you know an extreme ideologue um all right ideologue who like worked for jeff

sessions and like came out of that world and like he doesn't know tech people you know what i mean like he doesn't rub elbows so he doesn't hang out with grimes you know what i mean like and so right so it's hard to kind of see like to me this seems like a little bit of cope i'm wondering if like did you get any sense in the reporting that like steven is actually positively influencing or reigning in elon at all like i find that hard to imagine more of it implementing i think it's more that i also i can't believe this reference survived in the story but i live vibe with these editors are wired so hard and they kept it which was we made a pet shop boys reference

um to the song opportunities where there's the whole you know you've got the brawn i got the brains and that's kind of what's going on here with steven and katie having a better knowledge of the federal apparatus than elon at the very least came in with, right? I mean, we can maybe say he's a, he's a really fast learner or, you know, put that aside. And then Elon is kind of the brawn with this relentless drive to spread this farther,

had the message get out in front and, you know, the Trump advisor is not necessarily knowing what's going on, just like the rest of us. So for all that whole problem is supposed to basically be come down to Stephen and Katie Miller. And that Katie, who again is not,

she's a special government employee. She's not officially in the white house. Well, Stephen's title is, you know, on paper, Devin, you don't officially in the white house.

You know, I think I'll think of some back and forth about this. We're all in the White House, but obviously there's the Doge administrator on paper. It's just like, dude. To this point, I had to back and forth with Katie on X, where there's a story of the guys at 404 Media Broke about how

the Doge employees weren't going to use Slack anymore because the Slacks were foiable, essentially. They wanted to move doge under executive office of the president at where there's more latitude uh and you know i i pointed out that that was this was maybe kind of similar to the concerns people had about the hillary clinton private server that she was using to avoid foia that was this massive front page scandal um and uh and katie replied that there are no conspiracies or private server.

And I was like, well, but are you guys then being transparent about all your communications? Because it seems not to me. And if Katie Miller is not a full-time government employee, she is not covered under certain transparency laws. Elon is obviously trying to avert some of this. Do you get a sense for, I mean, I guess it seems obvious that these guys are doing some things to try to avoid having to be FOIA'd. People are concerned about Elon being uncontrollable here.

How much are people kind of enjoying the trauma that he's causing? You know, I mean like the people who talked to me for this story, to your point earlier, are all ostensibly on board with like the general policy objectives of Doge. And there's totally an alignment here with like Doge's targets being things that Stephen Miller is very much a fan of based on his public statements about civil servants and foreign aid and all that. I still think that largely everyone's like, this is what it's going to be for a while. There are very few, if any, of my sources now who think this is going to blow up intimately. I think that was a little more mixed and it's weirdly as the PR disaster has gotten worse, it's kind of consolidated or

they're more skittish. It's Trump. Trump keeps signaling that as long as Trump is happy with it then there's no reason to think that there is going to be any sort of blow up internally and none of this, none of that and that isn't going to change until the matters on the ground change. Totally.

All right. Well, any other gossip around Doge? I will say the one thing that they do get into, because this is a weird recurring thing, they talk about Elon like a gifted child. And, you know, they throw him around a lot of ages a lot of them are like 11 and 12 notably like pre-teen years is how they refer to so i think that was the wording we settled on um in the story and he's just he's held to a different standard for

a couple of reasons i mean you know still with all those like caveats they'll throw out, they're kind of like, okay, brass tacks, one big vulnerability here. And that is, even though Trump is thin-skinned when important people at a certain level speak ill of him, right? Yeah. The Trump world atmosphere is so hyper-macho, right? All this stuff you talk about in your show elon caring what like random people think of him you know anons on twitter yeah just that kind of thing there's a consensus building based on the people i've talked to you that that's a vulnerability in trump world that the worry is elon's skin is a little too thin He may be either enjoying or paying so much attention to his

on-camera appearances. I mean, again, the optics yesterday, just like the last time when he was in the Oval, like, standing the whole time, stuff like that. They pick up on that, and they talk about that with me. But obviously everyone's like... And he's not as good at Trump and all that. Like, he isn't.

And my guess is that he's probably sensitive about that. And that's something to look for in the in the story also uh shout you know wired.com at least you know the the trump people who are are concerned this is an optics issue and that there's still an off-ramp to maybe you know throw elon under the bus and have him take the flag for it there's this tension we get in the story which is basically that stephen miller is sort of you know convene even though he's done appearances in the story which is basically that stephen miller is sort of you know convene even though he's done appearances in the press and stuff the a number of trump advisors would prefer elon to stay getting the majority of this heat because you know in their view even though he's

not as smooth as trump on camera to your point he's better at grabbing attention. He clearly is able to set the attentional agenda in a similar way. Compared to Stephen Miller, who is maybe not the most... Not exactly like he's super dynamic on TV, either. It's not like the backup option is like George Clooney.

He's a certain kind of charisma. A certain kind of charisma. Negative, I you know, a certain kind of charisma. Negative, I think, is the kind that you're looking for. Thank you so much, Jake. Keep checking in with us on your story. Absolutely. Everybody else go check out his story at Wired about how alarming an alarming phrase. The prime minister, Stephen Miller, and his relationship with Elon Musk.

We'll keep you guys posted as new stuff breaks. Subscribe to the feed. We'll see you all soon.