With his Middle East crisis spiraling out of control, his domestic agenda totally stalled, and popularity in the sewer, Donald Trump is keeping his eye on the prize. “Almost every night in the White House,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “President Trump calls his fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, for an update. Trump asks O’Rourke which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much.”

The donations come in by the millions and tens of millions—for his presidential library, his ballroom project, his political action committees. Trump may be a president, but America’s CEO class knows it’s still much safer—and more profitable, in the long run—to treat him like a king. Happy Friday.

Join Catherine Rampell and JVL for Receipts Live on Substack and YouTube today at 12:30 p.m. EDT.

Fauci’s Diary Made Katie Miller Look Human. She Can’t Have That.

by Andrew Egger

By now you’ve probably read plenty about congressional Republicans’ latest struggle session against Anthony Fauci—the mean-spirited publication of his COVID-era diary, the barrage of ridiculous and misleading questions at his Senate hearing, the crude spectacle of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeting a photoshopped image of himself clapping the doctor in handcuffs.

Yesterday, though, my attention was captured by a far smaller, sadder side plot in the Fauci affair spotlighted by NOTUS—one involving Katie Miller.

During Trump’s first term, Miller was a senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and therefore a close colleague of Fauci’s on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, which Pence chaired.

From his journal entries, it’s clear that Fauci quickly took a liking to Miller, whom he viewed as a bright young colleague and for whom he developed an almost grandfatherly affection. “Katie Miller is great (tough, smart, but great),” he wrote in March 2020. “Katie Miller and I laugh at each other in the Sit Room,” he wrote two months later.

The work of grappling with a brand new, barely understood pandemic was stressful, both professionally and personally—after all, the task force could get the virus too. At several points, Miller leaned on Fauci for medical advice. “I am calling Katie frequently to check on her couple times per day,” Fauci wrote after Miller tested positive for COVID in May 2020. “She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone.”

This was still awfully early days in the pandemic, when little was yet known about the relative risks COVID presented to various groups. Think of how genuinely terror-stricken Miller must have been. Think of how reassuring it must have been to have America’s top infectious-disease expert on hand not just to advise her, but to show personal concern for her physical and mental health. Miller, NOTUS reports, went back to Fauci repeatedly for medical advice throughout the pandemic: later that year when her husband tested positive for COVID, and again when their newborn experienced an unrelated medical episode. In the latter instance, Fauci records, he called the baby’s doctors directly to ensure she was getting good care.

Miller purports to feel differently now. “Dr. Fauci was neither my friend nor my doctor, but a work colleague who weaponized my pregnancy and child for his gain to aggrandize himself,” she wrote on X yesterday. “As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I can say with certainty after witnessing his con close up this man should be in prison. Justice for the American People.”

Miller’s claim here—that she was only relying on Fauci’s pro bono medical advice to “keep her enemies closer”—beggars belief. Nor does her explanation of his behavior make a bit of sense: Apparently, he “weaponized [her] pregnancy and child” to “aggrandize himself” by . . . showing concern for her well-being and going out of his way to help her out from time to time. And he kept it all private even as the Millers and the rest of the Trump movement turned him into a bogeyman.¹ Sinister!

Still, it’s easy to see why Miller is twisting herself in these sorts of knots. Fauci has become one of the MAGAsphere’s chief villains, while she’s become one of its influencers, with hundreds of thousands of followers and an odd soft-focus podcast aimed at MAGA moms. The ecosystem she’s chosen to live in is one dominated by political paranoia and intramural accusations of secret disloyalty. Fauci’s diary drop must have been a nasty shock. What if some clout-chasing rabble-rouser used it to try to expose her as some sort of Deep State plant? Better to get ahead of the accusations by cooking up some ridiculous “cover story” for associating with Fauci—and to call for his jailing too, just to be on the safe side.

Now, of course, Miller does a lot of things that I personally find a little difficult to wrap my head around. This, after all, is a woman who has tried to get the FBI to criminally investigate her neighbors. This is a woman who once lost her cool in a TV debate and started threatening her interlocutor with deportation. This is a woman who married Stephen Miller.

Still, it’s interesting to see a human side of Miller emerge in Fauci’s diary entries—and incredibly depressing to see her treat that human side as a four-alarm PR fire. What a bummer way to make a living, swimming in this revolting internet ecosystem. Hard to imagine she’s having a lot of fun.

Shoot the Puck

by William Kristol

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” This lesson comes to us courtesy of Wayne Gretzky, perhaps the greatest hockey player ever. Gretzky credits this sage advice to his father, Walter, who was driving him to practice one day and wanted to encourage young Wayne to shoot more.

It’s a good hockey lesson. It’s also a good politics lesson.

When Donald Trump announced his nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general almost two months ago, the prospect of blocking his confirmation in the Senate seemed grim. This Republican Senate has routinely confirmed almost all of President Trump’s nominees. Republican senators have expressed qualms and objections—and then routinely caved.

But as of now, Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina haven’t folded. They may still, and Blanche may still become attorney general in a permanent capacity, as opposed to his current acting capacity, in which position he’s already done a great deal in service of the Trumpist corruption of the Department of Justice. That corruption will continue under Blanche or any Trump-appointed successor. So this victory may only be transient, and in any case will be limited in its practical effects.

Still. For now, Blanche is blocked. Even if he eventually makes it, he will have been weakened. And in any case the protracted and well-publicized fight over Blanche has been