The President’s Goons Are Glitching

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Welcome to Why, America, I’m Leeja Miller. I just got back from two weeks abroad, highly recommend if you can get away, thanks to your support of this channel here on YouTube or over on Substack, I was able to go one measly week without reading the fucking news, so thank you so much for that. On Monday afternoon, resident White House goon Stephen Miller went on CNN to discuss Trump’s decision to deploy national guard troops to US cities and, after claiming erroneously that Trump has plenary power to do whatever he wants, something he clearly didn’t mean to say and didn’t know how to walk back, Stephen Miller had what can only be described as a full on mental glitch on live TV. And like when I read the headlines about it I was like sure whatever they’re always saying he’s “having a meltdown on the news” like this is just another clickbait headline but no, I need you to watch the full thing because it is actually bat shit cuckoo bananas. [Insert clip]

The version now on CNN’s YouTube channel has just completely removed that segment, making it look like it never happened, but thanks to the internet it does live on. They claimed it was a technical difficulty but like that’s not how a human from planet earth reacts to a technical difficulty live on air. You say oh I can’t hear you, what was that, did you say something, I think you’re breaking up, anything at all to indicate that something is malfunctioning. Instead he said “plenary authority,” started to try to walk it back, thought better of it, and just fully and completely froze, like did a full on Mitch McConnell. It’s such bizarre behavior that even though it happened in the middle of the day on a CNN show amid a busy news cycle with constant coverage, it went viral and got a LOT of people speculating about what the fuck is going on. Again, because that is not how a human person reacts to technical difficulties, it does indicate that something else was afoot there. Here’s my take: Stephen Miller was discussing quote “title 10 of the US code” in support of Trump’s authority to unilaterally send in the troops against the will of state governors. Title 10 of the US Code is titled “Armed Forces” and has a number of subsections. Up until now, Trump has been citing to his authority under 10 USC 12406 to call in the National Guard in LA elsewhere. And I think it’s important to know what the law says because I think these laws are at the crux of how the Trump regime plans to push forward with attacking the “enemy from within” in the coming months and years. 12406 says in full, quote “Whenever—

(1)the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;

(2)there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or

(3)the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;

the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to repel the invasion, suppress the rebellion, or execute those laws. Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.” The lawsuits against his federalization of the National Guard have revolved around the fact that this authority he’s citing to requires that the orders are issued through the governors of the states, meaning with the approval of the governors. Other lawsuits also point out that there is no actual legal basis for Trump to send in troops–meaning none of those three scenarios has been met, there is no rebellion, or invasion, or inability to enforce the laws, it’s based on lies and zero evidence. That’s why the federalization of national guard troops in Oregon was stopped, for now, by a Trump appointed judge, though Trump has tried to circumvent that ruling by sending in the National Guard from other states instead. A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow before the Ninth Circuit court of appeals as the Trump administration tries to get around that ruling. In Chicago, a judge declined to block the deployment of the troops, for now. The judge didn’t rule it was lawful, they just declined to make a ruling at all, pending further information from both sides.

And the real underlying problem here with Trump’s legal arguments, poor arguments that I’m sure are going to work anyway once they reach the Supreme Court, is that the regime is claiming they need to do this to execute US laws regarding immigration enforcement but what happens when the federal government is coming in and BREAKING the law, and claiming it’s part of immigration enforcement. He doesn’t need to send in the troops to enforce the law as written, he needs them to enforce his illegal overreach, his arrests of US citizens, his gestapo’s excessive use of force, this is not an enforcement of the law it is breaking the law and then claiming they’re enforcing some law that doesn’t exist that says they can come in and use excessive force to arrest people who are here legally and then deny them due process and send them to a gulag.

This is important context because up until now those cases have revolved around, like I said, section 12406. But title 10 also includes another law, commonly referred to as the Insurrection Act, which is, in relevant part, 10 USC section 252. THAT act says, quote “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

Section 253 goes on to say quote “The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it—

(1)so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

(2)opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”

That is the insurrection act that Trump has continually threatened to invoke, especially in recent days as a means to get around the courts that try to block him from sending in troops to democrat led cities. That’s why the members of the regime repeatedly use words like invasion and insurrection to describe democrats to describe leftists to describe immigrants, and so on, because that is the playbook of an autocratic regime–you turn dissent into terrorism and anyone who doesn’t agree with you into a terrorist, an insurrectionist, a criminal, a dangerous element that must be stamped out.

And so when Stephen Miller talks about title 10, he’s talking about the insurrection act, but when he glitched on CNN, that’s because he made the claim that Trump has plenary power under title 10. The problem is that Trump does not have plenary power, period, under any section of any law in the United States. Plenary power means complete and unchecked power. It means he can do whatever he wants without having to answer to Congress or to the judiciary. That is literally the antithesis of how our government is set up. There are three branches, there are checks and balances. However, Stephen Miller also couldn’t walk it back, he couldn’t say “sorry I didn’t mean plenary power, here’s what I actually meant” and move on, because the reality is that he is trying to push an incorrect and unfounded interpretation of the law that Trump DOES have plenary power, he thinks Trump SHOULD have plenary authority no matter what the law says, and so he can’t say “no he doesn’t” because that undermines his ultimate goal. He said the quiet part out loud. And then completely glitched out on live TV. Please make no mistake when you see something and think surely they won’t go there, they will. They have been teeing up the insurrection act since before the election and they are just waiting for us to be broken down enough that they can move forward with it as swiftly and easily as possible. Trump will attempt to use the insurrection act, it is not a matter of if it is a matter of when. Period, full stop. And Stephen Miller will be at the forefront of that crusade.

Turning to another Trump goon Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, during which she spent a solid four and a half hours fully glitching out.

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Often, the way news outlets report on a story differs depending on the bias of the publication. And it’s hard to know how YOUR own perception of bias influences your interpretation of the news. This headline from NBC News caught my eye “Schiff recaps questions Bondi refused to answer during oversight hearing.” Using the Ground News browser extension, I can see that in the US NBC News is considered “left leaning.” To get a fuller picture of the story on all sides of the political spectrum I can click on Full Coverage, which will show me coverage of the same story from publications across the political spectrum.

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Yesterday’s hearing was a kind of hearing that happens frequently, meant to conduct oversight into the functioning of the Department of Justice. This one was especially necessary given the numerous ways the Justice Department has been weaponized and acted as the personal law firm of Donald Trump over the last 8 months. But at the same time, this hearing was largely meant to bring Pam Bondi out like a show pony and give Democrats some sound bites they can point to later to say they’re really pushing back. It won’t actually amount to anything because Democrats don’t have enough power to do anything. But it’s an opportunity to make the administration look bad and point out what a bad job they’re doing to the public at large. And so I think it’s important to take a look at the topics that were discussed not because this hearing will amount to anything but because it is meant to give us, the American people, more insight into the inner workings of our justice department, because remember democracy is based on the consent of the governed, and transparency is key to the proper functioning of democracy. Meaning that being as opaque and secretive as possible and refusing to share information with us is the exact goal of this anti-democratic regime. With that in mind, it is particularly stark the way that Pam Bondi showed up to this hearing, not as a humble public servant fulfilling her duty to the American people to serve as an example of great legal thinking combined with strong moral character, as someone who understands the weight and importance of her job and wishes to uphold the legitimacy of her department before the American people. That is not what we saw yesterday. Instead we saw a person, bedazzled with a cross and truly one of the more hideous American flag trinket necklaces I’ve ever seen, who is using the guise of Christianity and Patriotism as a thin veil to hide her true loyalties which are completely and solely to Donald Trump, for whom she served as a personal attorney, and for Project 2025, which she championed while working for Trump- and Project 2025-aligned America First Policy Institute. She showed up ready to fight, having clearly memorized canned attack responses against certain Democratic Senators. Anyone who has taken five seconds to study logical fallacies, which should be anyone like Pam Bondi who went to law school, would know that an ad hominem attack, that is a personal attack against someone, is not a valid way to argue against a point. In fact her entire testimony would be a great way to test students on their knowledge of logical fallacies because she gave us an example of just about every one in the book. For an example of an ad hominem attack, look no further than the exchange with Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono, who asked Bondi about the investigation that was closed into border czar Tom Homan, who happily accepted a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents, to which Pam Bondi responded, ““You are also on video outside the White House protesting with a group called CASA, where Antifa members were. Does that mean you are a member of Antifa?” Or there was the exchange with Senator Blumenthal, who asked her about her past work in a law firm, to which she responded ““Senator Blumenthal, I cannot believe that you would accuse me of impropriety when you lied about your military service,” Bondi said. “How dare you? I’m a career prosecutor. Don’t you ever challenge my integrity.” That’s actually a twofer there, because you also get the “appeal to authority” fallacy, which is when someone tries to argue that a person must be right because of their position of authority or fame. I’m a career prosecutor, therefore I should never be challenged. Or there’s the red herring fallacy, a favorite of the Trump administration, in which you try to distract your audience by introducing something completely irrelevant to the discussion. Like when Dick Durbin asked Bondi about the legal rationale for sending troops to Illinois and she responded with “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump” as though Durbin’s love for Chicago or hate of Trump has anything to do with the legal rationale for the decision to send troops to Illinois. And on and on, and while it is a fun exercise in logical reasoning to try to spot the fallacies, the problem is, of course, as always, we are dealing with people for whom logic doesn’t matter. They are perfectly comfortable with the cognitive dissonance, with arguments that are so easy to poke holes in it’s hard to even know where to begin. If you were writing a villain into a government role for a tv show, you wouldn’t even write Pam Bondi because it’s so on the nose and obvious as to verge on uninspired. Everytime you think no they surely won’t say that, they surely won’t take the next worst step, or say the next worst thing possible, they always do. It’s actually starting to become predictable, for all the chaos and overwhelm their actions cause. Just consider what the worst thing they could do is and assume they will do it and you’ll be right most of the time. Even if they haven’t done it yet, assume they will and people on TikTok will call you a fortune teller.

Which is why, as annoying as it is to have to keep watching as America crumbles, it is important to keep an eye on what the DOJ is doing so as to better predict what’s to come. And yesterday’s hearing helped to lay out the more appalling abuses of authority by the DOJ, just so we can get a running list among the chaos and the noise. Those are as follows, in no particular order.

The indictment of James Comey. Comey was the FBI director first under Obama starting in 2013 and then under Trump who was quickly fired a few months into Trump’s first term. Comey made an enemy of Trump when he wasn’t sufficiently loyal to him, and because he pursued an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. We all know Trump is obsessed with that Russia investigation and mentions it regularly despite the fact that it happened a decade ago, probably because he has dementia (allegedly), and so Comey became his prime enemy related to that probe. Trump has repeatedly told Bondi to go after Comey in retaliation for his actions, and in fact, after US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert reportedly refused to indict Comey, he was fired (or he quit, depending on who you ask) and replaced with Trump’s personal attorney Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer with zero prosecution experience, who then, days after she was appointed and right before the statute of limitations was set to expire, moved forward with the indictment and is the sole signature on Comey’s indictment documents. The indictment accuses Comey of making false statements to Congress regarding leaks to the press about the Russia probe, an accusation Comey pleaded not guilty to today in his arraignment in the Eastern District of Virginia. When asked about why this entire scenario is so fucking dodgy, Pam Bondi insisted she would not speak about the indictment and refused to provide us with any transparency or even attempt to make an excuse for what the fuck is going on there.

Then there is the firing of career prosecutors apparently in retaliation for their work on investigating January 6th rioters or refusing to investigate Trump’s named enemies. She refused to comment on her actions there, acting as though it’s her right as our employee to deny us that information. Interesting.

She also refused to comment on the military strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, strikes that every legal expert with any integrity left has said easily breaks numerous federal and international laws–the president can’t just bomb civilians, and yet here we are and no one is doing anything about it and Pam Bondi, our employee whose salary we pay, refused to elucidate us on what the fuck they’re doing and how they think they can justify that.

And then of course there was the Epstein files. Watching the administration and Congress debate about the Epstein files is like looking at that meme where there are three spider mans all pointing at each other. Like yes we all know you are all horrible people who associate with horrible people so long as they will line your pockets. So when asked about Trump being flagged in the FBI’s review of the Epstein files, or why the Epstein files haven’t been released even though Pam herself said she had the files sitting on her desk, she acted as though it was deeply insulting and preposterous to insinuate that Donald Trump would be included in a massive trove of documents about a person who was his close if not closest personal friend, and instead tried to turn it on the Democratic Senators asking them what THEY’RE trying to hide and why THEY didn’t ask any of this of Merrick Garland in the last four years while he was attorney general. Which like, fair question to ask but also you literally are sitting in his position now and can release the documents so like if you care so much why don’t you just do it??? It is not a valid argument to say well Democrats did bad things too. Oh yeah? Prove it. Let’s see the files. Prove it!!

And speaking of Trump goons short circuiting over the Epstein files, Mike Johnson is now reportedly holding up the confirmation of Democratic Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva who won a special election two weeks ago and Johnson has refused to allow her to begin her work, leaving her constituents without representation in the House. This is reportedly due to the fact that she would be the decisive vote necessary to force Johnson’s hand and release the Epstein documents. Johnson has of course denied that and then changed the subject. Cruelty is truly the name of the game with Mike Johnson, who is using this government shutdown as a means of taking revenge on Democrats and federal workers to try to force Democrats into agreeing to Republican demands on the budget. Basically he’s being as mean as possible and then blaming it on the Democrats for not folding to his demands. And the only people who lose are the American people, who are without a representative in the House or who are one of 750,000 federal workers he’s said may or may not get any back pay at all, despite what the law says, claiming it’s just Democrats who are at fault for shutting down the government. Again, there is a federal law, passed DURING TRUMP’S FIRST TERM, no less, that says they are due back pay. Now those 750,000 federal workers are unsure when or whether they will receive their next paycheck. What a way to repay people who wake up every morning and give their lives and livelihoods to this government. It’s despicable. And while the cruelty and the obfuscation and the frankly just shitty execution of their jobs as our government employees has become commonplace, it’s important, as I do every week, to stop and say hey! This is not normal!!! At most other times in our history a single bullet point from this video would have dominated headlines for weeks, and it is only through their determination to move as quickly as possible to break as many norms and laws as possible so we’re distracted and constantly on the back foot, it is only because of that that the headlines are moving on so fast. So Pam Bondi’s hearing, and Mike Johnson’s cruelty, and Stephen Miller’s fake glitch are all opportunities for us to take a second and actually look square on at the people who are working, every day, tirelessly, to undermine our democracy and the functioning of this country. Because Trump is their mouthpiece and their puppet, but they are the ones with the soullessness to understand how this all works and use it to twist society to give themselves as much power as possible while hurting the vast majority of us in the process. Trump will go down in history as the Hitler of our time, but Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi and Mike Johnson and others are the ones who’ll stand trial at Nuremberg if we ever get out of this.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one where I outline how Trump plans to use RICO to prosecute leftists.

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