On Tuesday, top White House adviser Stephen Miller unleashed a wild, angry rant on CNN after tough questioning from CNN’s anchor about Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. This comes even as one of Musk’s silliest absurdities yet—the idea that DOGE found rampant fraud in Social Security—imploded spectacularly under basic scrutiny. There’s a through line here: The great illusion that Musk, Miller, and President Trump are trying to push—that they’re rooting out immense amounts of governmental waste and fraud—is collapsing all around them. We talked to writer Jill Lawrence, who has a new piece for The Bulwark arguing that the Musk enterprise has been exposed as a sham, about the larger MAGA mythology about the “deep state,” and why it’s proving unsustainable. Listen to this episode here.