A dominant Trump trio stood out in the news this week: Russell Vought who is gutting the federal bureaucracy; Stephen Miller who’s been ramping up rhetoric and putting jackboots in the streets; and Eric Trump who seems to be point man in tasty Indonesian opportunities, plus there has been a caper at the DHS that’s worth a mention.
Before I focus on our characters, let’s put things in political context with this dire warning from Seymour Hersh:
What’s happening now may be a trial run for the use of those forces to interfere on the behalf of the president and the Republican Party in states where the Democratic Party has a chance to win crucial seats in next fall’s Congressional elections. I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge that planning for such action is now under way in the White House.
I’ve previously attempted to parse the Trump 2.0 combination of bad intentions, competent elements, sheer corruption, and amazing ineptitude here and here.
There’s been plenty of buffoonery this week but too many serious doings to focus on more than a minimum of oafishness.
The first member of the Trump Trio Hersh mentions in the piece, albeit without explicitly crediting him with the scheme cited above, is Russell Vought.
As the Trump administration wrests control of the federal administration, Russell Vought seems to be the man at the wheel.
The Washington Post gets into the deets today:
The White House was aggressively encroaching on Congress’s power of the purse even before it began using the ongoing government shutdown as justification for rolling back billions more in spending.
Democratic, and many Republican, appropriators are angry at Trump’s White House for unilaterally canceling contracts, abruptly freezing billions of dollars in congressionally sanctioned funding and trying out a “pocket rescission” technique to permanently withhold $5 billion in foreign aid without congressional input.
“It is an absolute threat to Congress’s power of the purse,” said Robert Shea, a Republican who served in senior political roles at the White House budget office. “I come from a time when the administration feared the repercussions of crossing the appropriators. That time has passed.”
The Trump administration — led by budget chief Russell Vought — is intentionally pushing the boundaries of executive authority on government spending. Vought wants the Supreme Court to hear challenges to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which puts strict limits on the ability of the executive branch to withhold money that has been approved by Congress. Vought has said he believes that law is unconstitutional.
“If Congress lays down its arms on its most fundamental authority, I don’t know what leg they’re going to have to stand on going forward,” said Brendan Buck, who was an aide to former GOP House speakers Paul D. Ryan and John A. Boehner. “Presidents will take advantage of this opportunity, knowing this is one more area where Congress has weakened itself and the administration can just run over them.”
Initially Vought allied with Elon Musk on the DOGE project as well as the Heritage Foundation with its Project 25 effort.
But now he appears to be acting as an independent agent and an audacious one, from Politico in June:
Whereas Musk bulldozed through bureaucracy and largely ignored Capitol Hill, Vought relies on a different playbook: pushing change through institutional channels, backroom conversations, and contingency planning. That sort of meticulousness and deep understanding of government has inspired fear among federal workers as he strengthens presidential authority to dismantle large parts of the federal bureaucracy, underscoring that unlike Musk, Vought actually knows how to get things done.
His ultimate goal is to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will,” and use it to send power from Washington and back to America’s families, churches, local governments and states, he wrote in Project 2025.
“It wasn’t actually Musk holding a chainsaw. Musk was a chainsaw in Russ Vought’s hands,” said a senior government employee with a front row seat to Trump’s remaking of government, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to describe it.
The contrast between the two men is stark, and increasingly consequential. While Musk operated with a kind of maniacal urgency, Vought has proven he’s willing to slow down before speeding up. While Musk staffed DOGE with tech loyalists barely old enough to rent cars, Vought’s team at OMB is a veteran-heavy group with deep roots in government.
Sy Hersh warned months ago of Vought’s ambitions before his aggressive actions during the current government shutdown:
The administration’s plan to seize unprecedented unilateral power upon winning the election last year was no secret. Although some issues are now in the hands of the Supreme Court, the GOP’s notion was always to wipe out a large portion of the federal workforce in Washington and elsewhere. A major reveal came last fall in an interview Russell Voight gave to Tucker Carlson before his approval by Senate Republicans as head of the Office of Management and Budget: “We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the Executive Branch,” he said. “The president has to move executively as fast, and as aggressively as possible with a radical Constitutional perspective to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers.
“There are no independent agencies,” Vought told Carlson. “There are going to be massive layoffs and firing, particularly across some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.”
All of this was God’s mandate, Vought explained: “We’re put here for a reason . . . because God has given us a particular purpose for a particular time, and it’s incumbent on us to be responsible with those moments that we’re given.” (I wrote about that interview last fall.) Vought has taken advantage of the current government shutdown to fire even more presumably Democratic federal workers.
Hersh previously wrote about Vought last May, again citing the Fall 2024 Vought YouTube interview with Carlson:
“The left has innovated over one hundred years to create this fourth branch of an administrative state. You and I might call it the regime— this administrative state that is totally unaccountable to the president that lets it move in the direction that it has been going. . . . They have essentially taken authority. . . . They have no legitimate authority in the Constitution. . . . [The president says:] ‘I am fully aware of the tools at my disposal and I’m going to use them on behalf of the American people . . . I’m going to go do what I said I would do. . . .’ It will certainly read in the papers like chaos. That’s good.
“Yeah, you’re going to have to kick over peoples’ paradigms. You’re going to have to kick over people’s turfs. You’re going to have to change peoples’ understanding of things that they have invested their whole life into. . . . That’s going to cause a lot of turmoil into these bureaucracies, and you got to fight through it . . . the aspect of ‘Oh my gosh, you guys are racist and you guys don’t care about us as people. . . . One of the arguments they’re using in the press against me right now, as they say, ‘He called for trauma inside the bureaucracies.’ Yeah, I called for trauma within the bureaucracies.
“The bureaucracies hate the American people. . . . So, yeah, I would want to provide trauma against that bureaucracy in a way that frees the American people from the people that have assumed the type of power that the Constitution in no law, no public debate ever gave them. Does that mean we dislike everyone working at federal agencies and want them to have a bad life. No, of course. . . . We want to turn over the bureaucracies that [are] traumatizing the American people. . . . I think [Trump is] so unique in terms of being an historical transformational person that can actually save the country. . . . We’re put here for a reason. We’re put here because God has given us a particular purpose for a particular time, and it’s incumbent to us to be responsible with those moments that we’re given.”
So let’s presume if Vought is doing the inside-the-beltway nerd labor to gut internal opposition before the 2026 elections, then Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is handling the action on the streets.
ICE is absolutely dominating the news cycle and drawing all attention away from Vought’s administrative moves and the government shutdown. Check these headlines:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 15, 2025
Miller is also the member of the Trump Trio who drew attention in a recent CNN interview by implying that ICE might not comply with court orders in Oregon.
Boris Sanchez, CNN: You’ve called the district judge’s ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard in Oregon, illegal insurrection. Does the administration still plan to abide by that ruling?
Stephen Miller: Well, the administration filed an appeal this morning with the Ninth Circuit. I would note the administration won an identical case in the Ninth Circuit just a few months ago with respect to the federal housing of the California National Guard under title ten of the U.S. code. The president has plenary authority.
After a technical glitch, Sanchez goes back to the exact same question and drews a slightly different answer from Miller:
Sanchez: You’ve called the district judge’s ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard in Oregon, illegal insurrection. Does the administration still plan to abide by that ruling?
Miller: Well, the administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties.
But there are also many other options. The president has to deploy federal resources and source assets out of the US military to Portland, basically making the point that under federal law, section, title ten of the U.S. code, the president has the authority any time he believes federal resources are insufficient to federalize the National Guard to carry out a mission necessary for public safety.
So it’s important to understand that in Portland, ICE officers have been subjected to over 100 nights of terrorist assault, doxing, murder threats, violent attack, and every other means imaginable to try to overturn the results of the last election through violence.
The most important point I want to make today is that the number one and two items in the GOP platform in 2024 were to turn back the border invasion and carry out the largest deportation program in American history since Inauguration Day.
There has been an orchestrated campaign of terrorism and violence against ICE officers. Of course, we saw the recent sniper attack against ICE officers. They’re publishing their families photos online. They’re threatening them with murder or threatening with death, and they’re physically attacking them in the street each and every day. And yet, shamefully, the mayor and governor in Portland and Oregon have refused to render aid, leaving ICE officers to street fight every single night against these terrorists.
Even as Vought and Miller tag team on a truly frightening and seemingly well-executed attempt at an authoritarian clampdown, the third of our Trump Trio, Eric Trump, the closest to POTUS Trump himself seem to have more personalized and profitable concerns.
I’m referring to the hot mic exchange between Donald Trump and Indonesian president President Prabowo Subianto:
During the exchange, which took place on a live camera feed shortly after Trump addressed a gathering of leaders in Egypt to laud the Gaza ceasefire plan, Subianto asked Trump to meet with “Eric,” presumably referring to Eric Trump, president’s son who is the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.
“Would you do that?” Trump responds. “He’s such a good boy. I’ll have Eric call you.”
Neither leader appeared to be aware that their conversation was being picked up by a microphone. The audio is muffled and at times difficult to discern. It was not clear exactly what the two men were discussing.
President Prabowo Subianto’s hot-mic moment with President Trump revealed to the world just how many foreign leaders are eager to exploit the Trump administration’s transactional foreign policy. While we do not know what exactly they discussed, we do know that Prabowo asked for a meeting with Eric and Don, and offered access in return to Hary Tanoesoedibjo, an Indonesian billionaire with close ties to Trump.
“Trump received millions of dollars from Indonesia during his first administration, and the extent of his personal stake in Indonesian real estate and hospitality development remains unknown. Their hot-mic conversation was a window into the corruption and lawbreaking of President Trump, who has turned U.S. foreign policy into a tool for petty corruption and insider deal-making instead of supporting U.S. national interests.
I am under the impression that Eric and his brother Don, Jr. have marginalized their sister Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner from the Trump real estate empire, am I wrong or was that less the case in the first term?
The Center for American Progress documented some of these relationships in the first Trump term and predicted the 2019 victory of Subianto:
In the summer of 2015, Donald Trump signed a deal with Hary Tanoesoedibjo—an Indonesian billionaire and head of the Indonesian company MNC Group—under which the Trump Organization will manage two resorts to be developed by MNC at a cost of between $500 million and $1 billion. One of the planned resorts is to be located in Bali overlooking an important and often-photographed Hindu temple and will be the largest resort on the island. The other resort will be located in Lido, about 50 miles south of Jakarta, and will adjoin a theme park.
Hary Tanoesoedibjo has a shady financial record. In 2016, for example, he was implicated in an ongoing tax evasion scandal with a telecommunications company he previously owned, though he has proclaimed his innocence. As described by Foreign Policy, “Hary Tanoesoedibjo is a billionaire reality TV impresario with a rich dad, over a million Twitter followers, a love for Vladimir Putin, a trail of tax avoidance allegations, and outsized political ambitions.”
Trump’s conflicts also threaten to spill out into Indonesian politics. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, who sought the country’s vice presidency in 2014, formed his own political party in 2016 and has said he will run for president in 2019. While his own candidacy is unlikely to succeed, he will almost certainly be a key backer of defeated 2014 presidential candidate and would-be strongman Prabowo Subianto, who is likely to face Indonesia’s current president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in a rematch in 2019. Should Prabowo Subianto win, Hary Tanoesoedibjo will be in a position of significant influence.
And despite not fitting neatly into my Trump Trio conceit (mandated by Google FYI, apologies) this corruption story is just too typical of Trump 2.0 not to include.
…the Department of Homeland Security handed a massive aviation contract, potentially worth nearly $1 billion, to a relatively new company with no federal contracting experience, following an opaque and seemingly hurried process.
…
The three-year deal to fly migrants back to their home countries went to Salus Worldwide Solutions, a company founded by a former State Department official named William Walters. Until early September, the DHS division overseeing the contract was run by Christopher Pratt, a former State Department colleague of Walters. The White House had nominated Pratt for a high-level position to serve as the State Department’s main liaison with the Pentagon, but pulled his nomination on September 29.Internal DHS records seen by Mother Jones show that Pratt was involved in the contract award to Salus. In April, before the contract was awarded, Pratt scheduled DHS offsite meetings at Salus’s office, and he personally congratulated Walters after his company won the contract.
The contract, worth up to $915 million, is for air operations to support the administration’s effort to persuade millions of undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” a key plank in the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The White House calls the program “Project Homecoming.” Under it, immigrants who use a Customs and Border Protection app to self-deport are being offered a $1,000 “exit bonus” and free travel. This program is at least partially funded by money that Congress earmarked to provide foreign aid to help refugees, but which the Trump administration has repurposed for “self-deportations,”
A picture is worth a thousand words with this caper, Trump Trio or no:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 15, 2025
Salus CEO William Walters’ LinkedIn resume is interesting:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 15, 2025
His time at State gets more detail than anything else (apologies for the small print, click through to Linked In for an enlargeable version):
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 15, 2025
And let’s not forget his humble beginnings, including 4 months in Iraq, where none of the Trump trio ever served:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 15, 2025
Might as well look at the inside man on the caper’s DHS bio while we’re flipping over rocks:
Christopher C. Pratt
Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and PlansChristopher C. Pratt currently serves as the Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Senior Official Performing the Duties thereof).
Drawing on extensive experience in national security and international engagement, he is responsible for driving policy and implementation plans across all of DHS’s missions, including counterterrorism; cybersecurity, infrastructure security and resilience; border security and immigration; international affairs; and trade and economic security. He previously served as DHS’s Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, advancing U.S. national security interests and DHS priorities through collaboration with global partners.
Mr. Pratt previously served as the Principal Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the Department of State, where he led sensitive negotiations and engaged in high-stakes diplomacy to secure the release of American hostages and improve the government’s response to hostage-taking incidents. Prior to this role, he facilitated cross-agency collaboration to support complex recovery operations as Chief of Hostage Recovery/Personnel Recovery/NAR in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Department of Defense.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Pratt spent a decade in the private sector, where he designed and managed programs for U.S. Government entities, including establishing interagency initiatives in Afghanistan to advance mission-critical goals. He served as an advisor to the Commander of all forces in Afghanistan, as well as the Commanding General of all special operations forces.
A former practitioner of intellectual property law, he holds a Juris Doctor from The George Washington University Law School and a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech. Proficient in Pashto and Swedish, Mr. Pratt’s diverse background and expertise in diplomacy, negotiations, and cross-cultural engagement have equipped him to navigate complex international landscapes and deliver results that advance national and global security.
His official photo is worth well over 10,000 words and would complement portraits of any of the Trump trio:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 15, 2025
What’s more all-American than a couple of old colleagues pulling off an apparent inside-outside deal that could seemingly set at least one of them up for life, if not at Trump Trio levels.
I wonder what Under Secretary Pratt stands to gain, he’ll never be in the Trump trio, but a rising swamp raises all rodents.
Does he have a rabbi at DHS who keeps an eye out for him and reports up the chain, possibly all the way to DHS Secretary Krisi Noem? Is one of the Trump Trio aware (seems unlikely)?
Does Noem know that this kind of thing is going on or is it just a free-for-all at DHS. A well-organized authoritarian administration should include internal controls for including all the right people if nothing else. Wouldn’t want a chaotic atmosphere adding friction to the works.
The Trump trio shouldn’t have to handle everything themselves.
Just goes to show the egalitarian nature of Trump 2.0, a couple of decades as GOP apparatchiks and almost anyone can be in place for a potentially career-making deal, whether a Trump Trio insider or not.
As to who is controlling Trump real estate, maybe it’s Kushner getting the stolen Palestinian land and the other brothers deal with the rest? It feels like all of them are more in the news cycle now than in the first term to me.
Also, I’m so old, I remember when the Bush administration went around tearing up the US Constitution and when called on it, they trotted out legal kleagle John Yoo who told us that it was all perfectly OK and totally legal to torture all those brown people to death. Almost no one with any power objected even though it was a patently absurd argument, and they just went along with it because he was a lawyer, and lawyers are so well known for their ever vigilant forthrightness and rectitude. What they should have done is stood up and socked him square in the jaw before impeaching and jailing the whole lot of them. But of course, they did not.
Fast forward 20 years, and now we have the Trump administration running roughshod over the laws, and they don’t even bother to make sure the flunkies they trot out with their bogus justifications have legal degrees any more. A partisan hack like Stephen Miller will do just fine.
Some of us did warn twenty years ago that this would be the result of going along with the unitary executive bulls4it.
Russell Vought is on a mission from God. Stephen Miller has been criminally insane since at least his high school years, and he never disappoints, as the angry little twit proves it on a daily basis. And what a good boy Eric is gathering all that economic rent in exchange for all the taxpayer-funded goodies that daddy is handing out to billionaires throughout the world. Wait until the 99% of those Americans paying the tab finally figure that out. America first! You bet.
Private, loyal, police force (ICE)
Preparation for martial law
Subjugation of the Supreme Court and DOJ
Gilded palace decorations
Ballroom construction
He has no intention of leaving office.
It’s going to get interesting.
Seymour Hersh: “I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge…”
Nat, what kind of assumptions do you make in your own head about the political bias or absence of bias of this person with inside knowledge?