Garrett Graff asks:

Who holds the power in the Trump administration?

The full Signal chat provides some of the most “real” indications of where power lies in the Trump administration and how decision-making happens—and none of it is pretty.

The answer is shocking, but perhaps not surprising: Donald Trump isn’t that engaged in the policy of his administration, JD Vance is weak and powerless, and the only one that matters is Stephen Miller.

I wrote earlier this week about how fascinating it was to see how none of the senior officials seemed all that clear about what Donald Trump himself had wanted. The subsequent leaks of the full conversation only underscore how Stephen Miller — who, mind you, is not a national security official who would be normally involved in a military strike overseas — is the one who shuts down the debate over whether the action moves ahead: Miller, in fact, is only added to the group after people aren’t sure of the president’s wishes. Is Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, really not in a position to interpret the president’s own orders when it comes to military actions? He needs to call Stephen Miller for help? This is not a smooth functioning organization. Nor one where the president is sweating committing US lives to action or taking lives overseas.

Then we get to another part of the power dynamics we’re learning from the chat: JD Vance is powerless. Any other vice president in the last half-century could have and absolutely would have gotten the national security advisor immediately fired over this scandal. Let’s summarize it as such: The national security advisor accidentally included a top journalist in an exclusive backroom chat of the administration’s senior-most officials, where the vice president expressed his private disagreement with the president’s public policy decisions. How on earth can JD Vance let that stand?

The answer appears to be, simply: He doesn’t have the juice to get Waltz, who he doesn’t like in the first place, fired. [Continue reading…]