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As Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in a secondary role, steamroll through the federal government, there’s a taxonomy to the players that is important to understand. It’s semi-hidden at the moment. But you can see it showing up if you look up close and it will likely become more visible over time.
There are three big factions operating in Trump’s government with currently overlapping but very distinct aims and strategies. First, you have MAGA, which wants to punish and displace the people who made life hard for Trump in his first term and replace them with loyalists. That’s mostly about power and personal fealty to Trump. Ideology is mostly secondary to the core aim. Second, you have Christian nationalists who want to seize the power of the state to execute a top down re-traditionalization of American society and culture. Russell Vought is key to this group. The basic theory goes back into the aughts, when a faction of conservatives decided (essentially a counsel of despair) that they had lost control of American culture and that state power was required to get it back. Third are people like Elon Musk who want to radically hollow out the government, outsource its functions and replace many of those functions with novel technologies — AI, cryptocurrency, etc. This is a mix of Silicon Valley “move fast and break things” business culture combined with “dark enlightenment” Yarvinian degenerate thought.
In the short term, the tools and aims of these three groups are highly overlapping. They all want to fire a large portion of the federal workforce. Whatever the motives for firing them, they’ll inevitably be replaced by Trump loyalists, whether or not that was the main goal in canning them. The three groups overlap so much they don’t even look obviously distinct. But they are distinct. If you look closely you can see this in how DOGE is operating. And these differences are likely to become more evident over time.
Just as one example, when I pointed out to someone that the Musk purge has now come to the CIA, this person said, well, sure — they want to replace these people with Trump loyalists. Well, not exactly, I said. Certainly anyone who gets replaced will be replaced by Trump loyalists. Because, under this government, who else would they replace them with? But I don’t think that’s why the whole thing is happening. I think it’s more part of radical cost-cutting, technology replacement and probably some level of foreign subversion.
As I said, there’s not an “ah-ha” moment with this post, necessarily. This doesn’t build to some silver-bullet strategy to undo the whole effort. The immediate practical takeaways aren’t huge. But these groups actually have very different goals, even if they nonetheless all require similar near-term execution. And in personnel terms they’re different factions, different groups of players, within the government. Over time these different groups are likely to come into conflict, though just when that will be is hard to predict. But most of all, you can’t fully understand what’s currently happening without recognizing these different groups and aims at play.
NOTE: As I have for 25 years, I welcome your responses, which you can send to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo dot com. If you’re a government worker or anyone else who has sensitive or confidential information to share about what’s happening inside the federal government you can reach me via encrypted mail at joshtpm (at) protonmail dot com or via Signal at joshtpm dot 99. Please only use these encrypted channels for confidential communication.