With Stephen Miller being given amble flexibility in his role, Vice President J.D. Vance threatening critics, and Attorney General Pam Bondi putting the muscle of the Department of Justice at their disposal, Salon columnist Brian Karem suggested things can’t get much worse.

In a biting column on Friday, the former White House correspondent who was once banished by Trump in his first term proclaimed: “The demons are loose.”

Building on that, he continued, “White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have cut their final ties to the Constitution and have mounted up to spread destruction. These demons gallop through the country on horseback, eagerly waging war with sanity, facts and anyone who scares them — which is pretty much the whole world."

Writing that Miller “spreads fear and hatred,” while Bondi “is lawlessness and anger; she is war,” he added that Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “the master of pestilence and disease.”

Put them all together, he wrote, and you have a recipe for chaos.

Pointing to social media as a “tool” being used by performative Trump insiders playing for approval, Karem wrote, “We made these demons. We have encouraged them and we have fed them. Each side in this demon-haunted world blames the other for the very conditions they decry.”

Focusing on the ongoing Charlie Kirk culture war, he wrote, “We’ve lost the ability to face these uncomfortable, complicated realities. Kirk was neither a demon nor a saint, and looking for the cause of his death in slogans and political statements is pointless — if you want to solve the problem. The person who pulled the trigger is responsible. That person alone made the decision to end a man’s life. Every one of us should condemn the action and make sure it is never repeated. Our children and our grandchildren deserve better.”

“Kimmel’s firing shows us that Trump has now coalesced his power sufficiently to force any corporate critic to bend the knee. Independent voices may remain, but Trump and the GOP have successfully created a martyr in Charlie Kirk to destroy critical thinking, sideline humor and silence the press — and anyone who says something Trump cannot handle,” he elaborated before suggesting, “We are indeed haunted by demons sent to divide us, while the man sitting on top of the pale horse is driving us to hell. And he still won’t talk about Jeff Epstein.”

You can read more here.