For all the norms Donald Trump flouted in his first term, his approach to filling out his administration was familiar. He rooted around the same sets of professions as his predecessors, hiring lawyers, CEOs, academics, and military leaders, among others. Liberals may not have liked his picks—Jeff Sessions for attorney general, say, or Michael Flynn for national security adviser—but regardless of ideology, most of his top advisers had recognizable credentials. In his second term, Trump has found a new talent pool to draw from: podcasters.

In the past week, Trump has tapped two podcasters, Dan Bongino and Graham Allen, for high-ranking jobs in his administration. Bongino, who hosts one of the most popular right-wing podcasts in the country, will become the deputy director of the FBI. Allen, of the Dear America Podcast, will serve as a top communications official at the Defense Department. Even accounting for their unconventional backgrounds, their appointments are surprising. Each has used his platform to trade in extreme conspiracist beliefs. On his show, Bongino has claimed that the pipe bombs found near the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were actually an “inside job,” that the results of the 2020 presidential election were false, and that checks and balances in the government matter less than “power.” (Though a former Secret Service agent, Bongino has no previous experience at the FBI—a departure from those who have held the role in past administrations.) Allen has reportedly claimed that climate change is part of a liberal plot to control people and has called Taylor Swift “a witch and a devil.”

Bongino and Allen, neither of whom responded to requests for comment, are part of a cohort of right-wing media figures who have been assigned top roles within the administration. That includes Darren Beattie, the founder of the conspiracist website Revolver News, who joined the State Department, and Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who is now secretary of defense. Many, if not most, of these figures earned Trump’s loyalty by using their platforms to be obsequious stewards of MAGA—in effect, creating a quasi–state media. But as these figures make the move to government, the Trump administration is also now becoming a media-run state.

[Read: The white nationalist now in charge of Trump’s public diplomacy]

It’s hardly unprecedented for media journalists to make the jump into politics—especially in communication roles. In his first term, Trump picked Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, as his chief strategist, and then–CNBC host Larry Kudlow as the head of the National Economic Council. In 2008, Jay Carney left Time to join Barack Obama’s administration, eventually becoming the president’s press secretary. But something odder is going on now within the Trump administration: a breakdown of the barriers between media and government.

Trump’s recent appointments are only part of the melding. Consider the likes of Charlie Kirk, who doesn’t have an official government position but still seems to hold influence. In November, Politico reported that Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder and right-wing media figure, advised Trump on whom he should select for significant roles in his then-forthcoming administration. Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer who rose to prominence by pushing conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, was invited by Pentagon officials to travel on Hegseth’s first trip overseas. He then claimed to have joined Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a trip to Ukraine, meeting with the country’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The right-wing media’s formal and informal roles in the administration mark a new kind of singularity. The podcasters now do policy and dabble in politics. And some right-wing politicians, including Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw, have their own podcasts. So do some politicians on the left, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, who announced a new show this week. But on the right, politicians and media figures more explicitly mingle and work toward the same goals.

That is especially the case now that the Trump administration has barred media outlets including the Associated Press from covering many White House events, while welcoming in right-wing media figures such as Lara Logan. Although Fox News and Newsmax have cut ties with Logan for her extremist views, she was recently included in a State Department listening session. Similarly, yesterday, the Department of Justice chose to first give documents regarding the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein to right-wing influencers—including Posobiec and Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok, a high-profile right-wing account on X—instead of actual journalists. (The documents reportedly contain little new information.)

This blurring is indicative of a substantive shift in how the contemporary right operates. The conservative media ecosystem has long functioned as the id of the right wing. But in the media-state singularity, there is not even the pretense of space between the two worlds. President George H. W. Bush hosted Rush Limbaugh overnight in the White House, in a likely attempt to ingratiate himself with the radio host. Trump doesn’t need to do such a thing, because the modern equivalents of Limbaugh are inside his administration as high-ranking staff members. (After Limbaugh’s death, in 2021, Bongino took over his slot on many radio stations.)

The practical effect of this union is an ongoing rightward lurch. That the conservative media has infiltrated the White House explains some of the current administration’s policies—proposed mass deportations, vindictive tariffs, attempts to gut entire federal agencies. The new direction of the executive branch is a far-right podcaster’s fever dream. As Bongino posted in November: “We are the media now.” Since the election, the phrase has become popular among an online right distrustful of legacy news outlets. It’s only partially correct. Right-wing influencers such as Bongino are the media to swaths of America. They are also now the government itself.

Of the many bizarre and uncomfortable moments during today’s Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky—during which Trump finally shattered the American alliance with Ukraine—one was particularly revealing: What, a reporter asked, would happen if the cease-fire Trump is trying to negotiate were to be violated by Russia? “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now?” Trump spat back, as if Russia violating a neighbor’s sovereignty were the wildest and most unlikely possibility, rather than a frequently recurring event.

Then Trump explained just why he deemed such an event so unlikely. “They respect me,” he thundered. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt, where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, you ever hear of that deal? … It was a phony Democrat scam. He had to go through it. And he did go through it.”

Trump seems to genuinely feel that he and Vladimir Putin forged a personal bond through the shared trauma of being persecuted by the Democratic Party. Trump is known for his cold-eyed, transactional approach, and yet here he was, displaying affection and loyalty. (At another point, Trump complained that Zelensky has “tremendous hatred” toward Putin and insisted, “It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.”) He was not explaining why a deal with Russia would advance America’s interests, or why honoring it would advance Russia’s. He was defending Russia’s integrity by vouching for Putin’s character.

In recent years, the kinship between Trump and Putin has become somewhat unfashionable to point out. After Robert Mueller disappointed liberals by failing to prove a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, conventional wisdom on much of the center and left of the political spectrum came to treat the scandal as overblown. But even the facts Mueller was able to produce, despite noncooperation from Trump’s top lieutenants, were astonishing. Putin dangled a Moscow building deal in front of the Trump Organization worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Trump lied about it, giving Putin leverage over him. Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was in business with a Russian intelligence officer. Russia published hacked Democratic emails at a time when they were maximally useful to Trump’s campaign, and made another hacking attempt after he asked it on television to find missing emails from Hillary Clinton. The pattern of cooperation between Trump and Putin may not have been provably criminal, but it was extraordinarily damning.

Conservatives have invested even more heavily in denying any basis for the Trump-Russia scandal. A handful of MAGA devotees have openly endorsed Russian propaganda, but more Republicans have explained away Trump’s behavior as reflecting some motivation other than outright sympathy for Moscow: He is transactional, he is a nationalist, he admires strength and holds weakness in contempt.

And it is all true: Trump does admire dictators. He does instinctively side with bullies over victims. He does lack any values-based framework for American foreign policy. But many Republicans who acknowledged these traits nonetheless believed that Trump could be persuaded to stay in Ukraine’s corner. They were wrong. The reason they were wrong is that, in addition to his generalized amorality, Trump exhibits a particular affection for Putin and Russia.

Immediately after Zelensky left the Oval Office, Trump posted to Truth Social, “I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved.” The clear implication is that the United States will cut off its support for the Ukrainian war effort. Trump’s allies have already tried to foist the blame for that momentous decision onto Zelensky. Trump “felt disrespected” by the Ukrainian leader’s body language and argumentative manner, White House officials told Fox News. “Zelensky was in a terrible position,” National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry acknowledged on X, “but he never should have gotten sucked into making argumentative points.” And, he added, “he should have worn a suit.”

All of this ignores the much more plausible explanation of what happened today: It was a setup. Trump and Vance appear to have entered the meeting with the intention of berating Zelensky and drawing him into an argument as a pretext for the diplomatic break. Why should anyone have expected anything different? Trump has been regurgitating Russian propaganda, not only regarding Ukraine, since before Zelensky even assumed office. In 2018, the year preceding Zelensky’s election, he defended Russia’s seizure of Crimea; he has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Russian guilt for various murders; and he has even stuck to Russian talking points on such idiosyncratic topics as the Soviets’ supposedly defensive rationale for invading Afghanistan in 1979 and their fear that an “aggressive” Montenegro would attack Russia, dragging NATO into war.

In the past few weeks, Trump has made very little effort to conceal his pro-Russian tilt. He called Zelensky a dictator, and when asked if he would say the same about Putin, refused, insisting, “I don’t use those words lightly.” (No president in American history has used words more lightly than Trump.) He said Ukraine “may be Russian someday” and blamed Ukraine for starting the war. The U.S. even joined Russia, North Korea, and a tiny bloc of Russian allies to vote against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The less damning explanations for Trump’s pattern of pro-Russia positions have all collapsed in the face of evidence. One line of defense, hauled out by Republican hawks to explain away Trump’s consistent efforts to undermine NATO, is that Trump actually wants to prod Europe into spending more on its own defense. Like a tough football coach, he is merely berating his team to become the best version of itself.

Except when European countries declared themselves ready to increase their defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, the level Trump claimed to have wanted, he upped the demand to 5 percent. More recently, he advocated for the election of the right-wing, pro-Russian, anti-NATO AfD party in Germany. That is a strange thing to do if your goal is to push allies to stand up for themselves against Russia, but a perfectly sensible position if your goal is to undermine the anti-Russia alliance.

Republican Russia-hawks hoped they could bring Trump around by getting Ukraine to sign a deal handing over a portion of its mineral wealth to the United States. Instead, Trump announced that the mineral deal was dead. This, too, would be a strange move if his motives were purely transactional, but a very understandable one if his motives were to abandon Ukraine to Putin’s tender mercies.

Even today, Trump’s bullying commenced well before Zelensky had opened his mouth. Trump greeted his counterpart on the White House driveway with condescending mockery, pointing at him and telling onlookers, “He’s all dressed up today,” like Bill Batts in Goodfellas belittling Joe Pesci’s character. (“Hey, Tommy, all dressed up!”) Zelensky’s attire—the Ukrainian president wears military attire, not a suit, to remind the world that his country is at war—has been a fixation on the right, and conservatives have seized upon it as a pretext to blame him for Trump’s anger. Oddly, they did not seem to mind that Elon Musk showed up at the White House this week in a T-shirt and baseball cap.

Might Zelensky have gotten a different outcome by taking Trump’s abuse and stream of lies with more self-abasement? Sure, it’s possible; if you reason backwards from a bad outcome, any different strategy is almost axiomatically smarter. Zelensky had no good options at the White House. He walked into an ambush with a president who empathizes with the dictator who wants to seize Ukraine’s territory. Everyone who spent years warning about Trump’s unseemly affinity for Putin had exactly this kind of disastrous outcome in mind.

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