Ashley Parker

And I believed in a reality based world.

But for his purposes, he is nearly as happy to have those 40 percent of the electorate think he won the election.

I have a J for 10 points, and I can put that on a double letter.

So J-A-M, that's 24 points.

In our profile, we described him as the pulsing id of a president who is already almost pure id.

And one of the first ways we, the nation, kind of collectively glimpsed it was during Signalgate.

right, where our boss, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, is inadvertently added to a private signal chain of Trump's top, top, top people discussing a bombing campaign in Yemen.

And this is fascinating for a number of reasons for what it reveals, including just the sheer sloppiness to add a journalist to a private signal chain with essentially classified information.

But to me, even then, even before I started reporting on Stephen Miller and came to understand the true scope of his power and influence was that in that debate, you have the vice president and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary and, you know, all of these top people going back and forth.

Stephen Miller is in that chain, technically the lowest on the totem pole, right?

He's not elected yet.

He's not Senate confirmed.

He's not a cabinet official.

And at one point, Stephen Miller weighs in, and I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but he essentially says, look, as I understand it, the president gave the green light, you know, to go bomb Yemen.

And then everyone's just like, oh, okay, let's do it.

And they do it.

And when we were talking to people in the White House, it became clear that a directive from Stephen Miller is viewed as a directive from Donald Trump himself.

And then went back to debating immigration, right?

He sort of said that's correct and then went back to his debate.

But his broader view of government is a sort of maximalist view, right?