Stephen Miller’s Trains Don’t Run on Time
I was going to write a piece anticipating the showdown at SCOTUS over Stephen Miller’s invasion of Chicago, which may well determine the future of democracy in the US.
But as I was contemplating all the lies that Miller and his henchman have been caught telling in Chicago and Portland, two other stories came out that highlight how bad Miller is at execution. Both pertain to his effort, built on a edifice of lies, to rationalize a war in Venezuela based off a largely manufactured claim that Tren de Aragua is “invading the US” on behalf of Nicolás Maduro.
Chronologically, WaPo provides new details about the quid pro quo behind Marco Rubio’s deal to send planeloads of Venezuelans to a concentration camp in El Salvador: The US would have to send the people who had cooperated with DOJ to expose Nayib Bukele’s ties to MS-13, a gang that Trump purported to treat as a terrorist organization.
In the days before the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, the president of that country demanded something for himself: the return of nine MS-13 gang leaders in U.S. custody.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a March 13 phone call with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, promised the request would be fulfilled, according to officials familiar with the conversation. But there was one obstacle: Some of the MS-13 members Bukele wanted were “informants” under the protection of the U.S. government, Rubio told him.
To deport them to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi would need to terminate the Justice Department’s arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and Washington would hand over the MS-13 leaders.
[snip]
The deal would give Bukele possession of individuals who threatened to expose the alleged deals his government made with MS-13 to help achieve El Salvador’s historic drop in violence, officials said. For the Salvadoran president, a return of the informants was viewed as critical to preserving his tough-on-crime reputation. It was also a key step in hindering an ongoing U.S. investigation into his government’s relationship with MS-13, a gang famous for displays of excessive violence in the United States and elsewhere.
We’ve known from earlier reporting that Bukele’s ask was top level MS-13 members in US custody. We didn’t know they were informing against Bukele.
Note that this reported conversation with Bukele on March 13 was two days before the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and three before the men — most guilty of nothing more than sporting less incriminating tattoos than the Secretary of Defense — got shipped away in a rush.
One of the many things that remains unexplained about the story is the reason for the rush — the rush to get an agreement, the rush to put men on planes.
Even given the rush (and the narrowly averted government shutdown), that’s when things started falling apart, when the ACLU got notice of the deportations, got an order from James Boasberg enjoining the deportations, and so set Erez Reuveni on a path that would get him fired. Not long after, one of the Salvadorans that Rubio intended to deal to Bukele, Vladimir Arévalo Chávez (who is mentioned in the WaPo story, started challenging the dismissal of his case and subsequent deportation, ultimately leading Judge Joan Azrack to order parts of the docket unsealed.
Then there are the murderboats in the Caribbean — a series of wildly illegal strikes lacking any recognizable legal justification. The murderboats appear to be an attempt to draw Nicolás Maduro into a war — though the Atlantic describes the underlying motivation as something far more craven, little more than an attempt to “paint immigrants as a dangerous menace.”
Then there are the senior officials who see Venezuela as a means to project a tough-guy, defender-of-the-homeland image. Stephen Miller views the air strikes as an opportunity to paint immigrants as a dangerous menace, according to one of the White House officials. Vice President J. D. Vance, though often inclined toward isolationism, has pushed the necessity of defending U.S. borders. And Hegseth, who prefers to be known as the war secretary, is seeking a means of projecting military strength in a region where Defense Department planners hope to reassert American primacy.
Donald Trump’s top aides have all decided to murder people in cold blood as a propaganda stunt.
Even before the most powerful military in the history of the world failed to fully execute its murderboat mission days ago, there were cracks in Miller’s murderboat propaganda campaign — not just the increasing demands for some kind of credible legal explanation, but also the resignation of SouthCom Commander Alvin Holsey. And even before all that, it became clear that Miller’s murderboat targets were not what he claimed they were: Venezuelans bringing fentanyl to the United States. The boats were too small. That’s not how fentanyl is trafficked to the US, most importantly, they weren’t all Venezuelans. Two were Trinis. Weeks ago, Colombian President Gustavo Petro started complaining that Colombians were being targeted.
And then the most powerful military in the history of the world failed its mission, operating in uncontested waters, to completely destroy a submersible it claims was shipping drugs to the United States.
The most powerful military in the history of the world failed to destroy a boat and as a result two very awkward targets — neither Venezuelan — survived.
And now, because of the slovenly execution of Miller’s attempt to gin up a war with Venezuela, Petro and Trump are ratcheting up a war of words over the earlier targeting of what Petro claims was a fishing boat in distress inside Colombian waters.
The slovenliness is so ingrained that the people writing Trump’s tweets can’t even spell Colombia properly.
Stephen Miller is incredibly powerful and so fascistic that Trump even hesitates to describe his ambition.
But he is also downright slovenly.
Stephen Miller is attempting to start a war to rationalize his domestic war. And he can’t even be fucked to dot his I-s and cross his T-s.
Update: We have always been at war against Eastasia.
The U.S. military has killed three men and destroyed another boat it suspected of running drugs in the Caribbean Sea, this one alleged to have been affiliated with a Colombian insurgency group, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Sunday.
It was the seventh boat known to have been attacked since early September as part of the Trump administration’s use of the military to kill people suspected of smuggling drugs as if they were enemy soldiers in a war, rather than arresting them as criminals. The latest strike took place on Friday, and Mr. Hegseth said in a social media post on Sunday that it had targeted a vessel associated with the National Liberation Army, a Colombian rebel group known as the E.L.N.
The banality of evil — shows up every time. They’re criminals because they know they’re not capable of winning by the rules.
I’ll say it one more time. All too often, that’s just the way the matzoh crumbles; into a half-baked cracker.
Miller is indeed a “half-baked cracker” but… crumbled matzoh is farfel.
Gesundheit!
Stephen Miller’s criminality derives from not knowing “the rules” (Miller IS NOT A LAWYER), but more than that having the trumption to believe, to the bottom of that hole where a heart should be, that no law applies to Stephen Miller. Miller is, after all, our acting president. The scofflaw that 49.5% of voters elected has vested him, along with Susie Wiles, with all powers of the office.
Does immunity apply to Miller? That will be one of the central questions for SCOTUS should Democrats ever retake power. Trump will always be off scot-free and infinitely richer, should he survive this term. Accountability is just another word for everything left to lose.
feb 9 gulf of america order.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/gulf-of-america-day-2025/
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“Rubio assured Bukele he would get his men and stressed that the American public cared little about the fate of Salvadoran gang members, officials said.”
A Cuban treating other members of the Hispanic community with contempt….I am shocked. The Trump Administration arranging for a black man to get the blame over the illegal killings of human beings by the US….double shocked.
Nice work.
Last para., first line, “start a war,” not a “way,” I think.
“Way” makes sense. The repetition of “war” just slightly less so. In my opinion.
Miller seems to have an huge hatred towards hispanics ever since his childhood days living in luxury in CA. It would be interesting to find out what kind of interaction could have caused this level of hatred.
Normally I would say that he needs professional help, but I think he is way beyond hope. Even his own family has written him off. He thinks he is the smartest person in every room and that is the kind of thinking that always ends up bringing this kinds of people down.
#te
I believe it has been Sen. Whitehouse saying that this administration is both gangster and gong show. Thoroughly corrupt, but not competent.
If and when we dislodge these people from power, there needs to be serious accountability, our own internal version of the Nuremberg trials. Stevie Miller and Greg Bovino should have to answer for what they have been doing.
They are counting on pardons — as are hundreds of other people.
Pay attention to state crimes.
Ship him to the international court for crimes against humanity
Benoit Roux: Wonder if Jack Smith will be back at the Hague by then?
Our nation and our democracy are being destroyed by these drug-addled fools. How is it possible?
“ Stephen Miller is incredibly powerful and so fascistic that Trump even hesitates to describe his ambition.”
Anybody have Trump’s quote from the other day handy?
It was pretty chilling, implying the Miller’s true, full intentions are even too evil for Trump.
It’s almost in this:
https://dianeravitch.net/2025/07/10/stephen-miller-a-life-and-career-driven-by-hate-and-ruthless-ambition/
where The Felon Guy is quoted as saying that if it were up to Miller, the US population would be about 100 million.
It was bound to happen that there would be survivors of the boat attacks. One of the likely targeting “rules of engagement” was to NOT target people that were in the water. They would be “hors de combat”. Targeting them would be clearly murder (not that extrajudicial killing of drug runners is any more defensible), that only a stone-cold psychopath could stomach pulling the trigger.
That the first survivors are from Colombia is an embarrassment for Miller and Whiskey Pete because it clearly shows how difficult it is to paint Venezuela as a narco-state that (clutching pearls) is harming U.S. children. In order to continue to justify this and reduce the embarrassment when the survivors start to talk, Miller might have to widen the “children harmers” to include other countries. Will the isolationist MAGA faithful agree to another Reagan-era “war on drugs” with Venezuela, Colombia, perhaps Panama, then reaching to the familiar countries of Central America?
In the mean-time, I expect White House pressure on the professional military to leave-no-trace and rescind the “hors de combat” rule. It could be as simple as requiring, for their safety of course, a re-strike rule for the boats before closer inspection. Given our sensing capabilities, those that obey this will already know if survivors exist. They will be guilty of crimes against humanity… in every way as real as those committed by the Nazis. They will face their own Nuremberg trial.
None of the boats they’ve destroyed have been capable of reaching the US, or even Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands.
It’s provocation, and should get the US censured by the UN and OAS.
Stephen Miller is dangerous and despicable, so is Russ Vought.
Russell Vought: The Shadow President
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1LuV82l0vs)
Isn’t that the nature of someone who’s been given unrestrained power by his boss? He doesn’t have to sweat the details. Even less so if messaging is the aim: scare off the foreigners will keeping the natives stoked. Whether he wins or loses in the courts is if zero concern; he banks on the (not unreasonable) assumption that six justices will bless whatever he’s doing.
Boater is a fisherman.
Jesus was a fisher of men.
Trump is a fissure of men.
Miller is fissile man?
I was expecting forced “confessions” from those survivors. That the admin is returning the survivors to Colombia, versus detaining them and prosecuting them (under the admin’s theory that they are tools of Venezuela attempting “invasion” of the U.S.), means those two are free to try again to “invade.” An odd choice if what the admin claims is going on is what is really going on.
On the flip side, the merit of the “return to Colombia” strategy means the two survivors don’t get counsel, can’t defend themselves in either court or the press, and means no “evidence” needs to be provided to a court by the U.S. to justify the strike in the first place.
Profoundly giving the lie to the administration’s rationale for all of the strikes.
I suspect that they are trying to figure out what to put on their death certificates. They can’t figure out if they suffered a heart attack or died trying to escape.
The Colombian government will be interested in what they have to say.
Not only do the trains not run on time, but neither do the Ubers and Lyfts:
Border Patrol Arrests 11 Rideshare Drivers At O’Hare Parking Lot [Blockclub Chicago]
The worst of the worst, I’m sure. Feel safer already.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/10/19/border-patrol-arrests-11-rideshare-drivers-at-ohare-parking-lot/
Meanwhile, no arrests yet in the apparent shelling of I-5 in SoCal.
OT however covers corruption in DOJ
Justice Department whistleblower says he witnessed abuses of power | 60 Minutes
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcSHMkyM0aE)
Miller can’t even shoo cats off the tracks.
(source)
I’m not sure how many boats have been blown up–4? 5? I had heard a recent one had survivors but if so are they in US custody? My first thought was that lawyers would have a live victim to sue the government.
I heard a former DEA guy on NPR explaining where various drug shipments go en route to the US (e.g. fentanyl via Mexico, cocaine via the Pacific).
Then I hear about a Coast Guard interception last week that netted 50 tons of cocaine and 86 arrests. Actual arrests. Doing stuff legally. While the Navy has killed a couple of dozen people and likely contraband floated away to wash up on a shore someplace where, if it was fentanyl, it could easily kill someone.
Some of the back and forth with the initial planeload of Venezuelans who were sent to El Salvador’s prison was covered on the CBS program 60 Minutes last evening. They covered how Emil Bove apparently told his underlings to tell judges to “f*ck off”, when it came to the specious reasons he used for sending them to the El Salvador concentration camp. What a corrupt operation, from top to bottom!
Don’t forget he denied ever having said this at his confirmation hearing, and then was confirmed. The truth does not die.