U.S. President Donald Trump reacts while delivering remarks at the U.S. Treasury Department's Trump Accounts Summit, in Washington, D.C., U.S. January 28, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Acclaimed author and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates claimed Thursday that President Donald Trump is building a "white supremacist army" inside the U.S. government that will last long after he's gone.
Coates joined former GOP operative Tim Miller on "The Bulwark Podcast" to discuss the Trump administration and propaganda. During the discussion, the two discussed a "reality shift" with Trump's Department of Homeland Security, which has come under enormous criticism for the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Miller said what he found most striking of all the "gross s---" was Secretary Kristi Noem standing in front of a "concentration camp" in El Salvador, referring to CECOT.
"That's probably the worst," he said.
But Miller was also aghast at the Trump administration's moves to push propaganda on Americans using ASMR videos and memes, which Coates noted wasn't possible in decades past.
"A lot of the memes they're putting out are just old 1950s posters reupped. Like you could've done that in Photoshop," he quipped. While that isn't "acutely harming" people akin to hurling someone into a detention center, he flagged the "perniciousness" of the campaign that has long term ramifications.
Coates called it "armed identity politics." While all politics is "identity politics," Coates stressed it's not all this brand of identity politics.
"As you pointed out, the memes, the 1950s stuff, the white supremacist stuff, where I get a New York Times article where the Times reporter calls up and says, 'Hey, uh, this is clearly a white supremacist anthem.' They deny it and the guy goes and checks it. They they act like he's lying and secretly take it down."
Coates stressed this is "something new."
"I've said some pretty harsh things in my time but I don't know that I've seen before the President of the United States attempt to build what I can only call a white supremacist army that'll outlast him. That is new. And I don't know what else to call it! Given the propaganda and the recruiting. I don't know what anybody else would want me to say."