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Today, a high-ranking Trump administration source confided to Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem that White House staffers are terrified Stephen Miller could become the next chief of staff, calling him “evil incarnate.” Donald Trump is teasing criminal investigations into both Barack Obama and the Clinton family. In that same interview, Trump also insisted he’s allowed to pardon himself, while teasing pardons for some of his own top staffers. And new analysis finds the current session of Congress is one of the least productive in four decades.
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There’s a growing sense of dread within Donald Trump’s White House all centered around one man — and it’s not the president.
One high-ranking source within the Trump administration confided to Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem today that rank-and-file staffers across the executive branch are preparing for a worst-case scenario in the event that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles either resigns or is fired. According to Karem’s source, there’s real fear that the man who would be elevated to the position could lead to “a disaster that this country has never seen.”
Karem’s source said: “The only thing worse than Susie Wiles staying, is Susie Wiles leaving. That would leave Stephen Miller to be the new chief of staff. And no one likes him in this White House, including Donald Trump. And everyone thinks he is merely evil incarnate.”
Despite Wiles being Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, her job is reportedly in jeopardy. Trump is reportedly fuming after a wave of embarrassing news reports focused on Wiles’ daughter, Katie, who’s been doing paid lobbying work on behalf of Republika Srpska, which is a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Given that the president has been dogged by relentless allegations of being a tool of the Kremlin, it’s not hard to see why headlines like those would cause consternation in the Oval Office.
Anyone who is familiar with Miller’s career can understand the fear of him being handed an even greater level of power. He’s the primary architect of Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, including ICE crackdowns that led to the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and that have terrorized immigrant communities across the country from Los Angeles to Houston to Biddeford, Maine.
Back in 2019, during Trump’s first term, Miller was outed as a white nationalist. Leaked emails showed him promoting content from white nationalist websites to a Breitbart writer during Trump’s first campaign back in 2016. Even for the people who chose to work for this president, the idea of handing all of the White House’s day-to-day operations to a man like Stephen Miller is apparently bad enough to keep them up at night. Keep an eye on this one.
Trump recently sat down with far-right network Newsmax and told host Rob Finnerty he has “a lot of information” on former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
According to the president, he could have “done numbers” on all three and “still could.” When Finnerty asked him to clarify, Trump said he had the ability to “go after them criminally” and even “destroy their reputations.” He didn’t give any further explanation.
Asked whether he’d actually go through with a criminal investigation, Trump said he probably wouldn’t. However, he said so with the caveat that his attitude could change “if they impeach me, again,” before abruptly changing the subject.
It’s always news when sitting president openly contemplates about using the Department of Justice to hound his political enemies. But it’s even more noteworthy given that this president has a pattern of doing exactly that.
Trump’s DOJ unsuccessfully prosecuted New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil suit against Trump after he was found to have artificially inflated the value of his real estate portfolio. Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted twice, with the first indictment getting thrown out after a judge ruled the U.S. attorney who signed the indictment hadn’t actually been properly appointed. A grand jury also refused to indict six Democratic lawmakers who recorded a video for social media urging active-duty service members to remember their duty to not follow illegal orders. The Trump administration has also launched investigations into California Senator Adam Schiff, former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
One main reason we have a Constitution is because the founders of this country revolted against a king who jailing his enemies. Trump is apparently determined to test the limits of that document.
In that same Newsmax interview, Trump also floated the idea of pardoning himself before he leaves office in 2029.
When asked if he was seriously considering issuing himself a preemptive pardon before the next president is inaugurated, Trump first stated he’d done “nothing wrong,” but then quickly added: “I’m allowed to do a self-pardon. I’m allowed to pardon,” saying it was the most powerful tool a president has.
Whether that’s true is far from settled. Just before Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that presidents can’t pardon themselves. Those opinions aren’t binding on the courts, however, and the question has never been tested.
What may matter even more is what Trump said next. He told Finnerty he doesn’t want people who work for him to “go through years of nonsense,” hiring lawyers to fend off what he called “lunatics” on the left. Weeks earlier, he told Time magazine he’s prepared to pardon members of his administration.
The signal to thousands of political appointees is hard to miss. Whatever they do on the job, the president is suggesting a pardon will be waiting. In an administration already plagued by corruption, that’s a dangerous green light.
While the White House talks pardons and prosecutions, Congress has barely been doing its job.
Pew’s analysis finds the 119th Congress has enacted just 121 laws since convening in January 2025. That’s the second-lowest total of any Congress in four decades at this point in its term, ahead of only the previous Congress, which had passed 106.
Between 1987 and 2009, Congresses averaged around 440 laws apiece before Election Day. Congresses since then have managed only about half that.
This Congress’ output includes Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, a stablecoin regulatory framework, $9 billion in cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting, the Epstein files disclosure law and a housing supply package. Another 23 laws simply overturned Biden-era regulations, and together with one voiding a D.C. local law, those reversals make up a fifth of everything passed.
Pew also notes that Congress keeps pushing more of its work into lame-duck sessions after elections. In the 118th Congress, 61% of its laws passed after Election Day, when members no longer had to face voters.
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