I still think Grok showed us something fascinating though - it's really hard to get an LLM to behave like a conservative, which is to say, spout things it knows are lies, while simultaneously keeping both a tacit objective (the maintenance of social hierarchy) and an overt one (sounding reasonable).

Watching Trump get distracted from talking about "the enemy within" to talk about how he liked watching Victory at Sea, thinks we should bring back battleships, has a great signature and is really great at walking down stairs does not make me feel like this is a durable authoritarian consolidation.

Which is just to say: Those young Trump staffers should understand that this isn't just how DC has always been. People are reacting differently because Trump is different. If 90% of the people you meet recoil in horror when they hear your job, maybe there's something wrong with your job.