Stephen Miller’s tenure as the Trump whisperer is the worst run for a White House aide in American history.
The president’s most trusted adviser has pushed the country to the brink with his draconian and now tragically deadly policies. America has not seen anything like this in living memory. Miller has turned ICE into a de facto secret police force and unleashed them around the country. He has pushed to have the U.S. military operate in city streets. He has questioned bedrock American jurisprudence by suggesting suspending habeus corpus for migrants — which would effectively allow the administration to haul away and detain anyone without making a case. His conduct inside and out of the White House, where he serves as deputy chief of staff, has made him a fearsome adversary to any who oppose his extremist views. Over the past year, Miller has ushered in a domestic reign of terror like no other unelected official and in doing so has earned a place among America’s most loathsome characters.
Trump was elected, in part, to get a handle on illegal immigration and the border. It must be said that to a large degree, in this, the president has succeeded. Illegal immigration has been curtailed, and stories of chaos at the Mexican border (at least in the northerly direction) have faded from the headlines. Instead of declaring victory, Miller went on a blitz. He, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and the recently cashiered Border Patrol commandant Gregory Bovino deployed masked immigration enforcement operatives on raids to sow fear, loathing, and conflict on America’s streets. Now two American citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, lie dead, shot and killed by federal agents in entirely avoidable and unnecessary uses of deadly force. Miller disgracefully slandered both the dead Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists out for blood despite evidence to the contrary.
Going back a decade, Miller has always been the most devoted Trump servant. Miller, an Iago-like character, shares one of the president’s few core values: a rigid nativist worldview. During Trump’s first term, serving as a senior adviser, Miller was the rare aide to survive multiple purges. His unwavering loyalty to MAGA and his penchant for vitriol online or on Fox gave him entree into Trump’s inner circle. He seems to have spent the four years of Biden’s presidency crafting how to become the ultimate authoritarian apparatchik. Enacting Trump’s policies became Miller’s goal and personal passion. Thus Trump 2.0 has been “a blast for Stephen,” a fellow White House adviser told Rolling Stone.
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A good time has not been had by all.
In the aftermath of Renee Good’s killing, Miller went on Fox and encouraged ICE agents to have no fear of retribution for their actions enforcing his policies. “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties, and anybody who lays a hand on you, or tries to stop you, or tries to obstruct you, is committing a felony,” Miller said on Fox. “You have immunity to perform your duties and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”
Not surprisingly, telling ICE they had a free hand led to more violence, and another avoidable death.
The damage from Miller’s grand designs are plain for all to see. The nation is more divided than ever. Americans’ mistrust and hyper-partisanship has grown only more poisonous. The country feels like a tinder box and Miller and ICE are running around with lit matches.
Miller and Trump’s might-makes-right approach is brazen and profoundly un-American. Even as the nation has failed and failed again to live up to its lofty ideals, the arc of its history has mostly bent toward reform and justice. Miller appears willing to throw all that aside to enact his fever dream of an immigrant-free America, an ethno-state that never was.
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In Miller, Trump definitely found what he had long sought: his own Roy Cohn. A man so ruthless and power-mad who is willing to be hated by all, if that means winning. There’s now little doubt that like Cohn, Miller will go down in the history books as a deeply weird and unusually vile miscreant, bent on nothing but destroying his enemies and the naked abuse of whatever power he can grab.
For the past year, Donald Trump has let Stephen Miller loose on the country. It has not gone well. A federal agency has been changed into a Stasi-like police force turned on its own people. Blood has been shed. ICE is now reportedly using sonic weaponry on protesters. Does anyone believe Miller will change his ways after the deaths of Pretti and Good? He is undoubtedly plotting some new action to strike back against his enemies — who he seems to think are his fellow Americans. Whatever else he is, Miller is a fighter. But Donald Trump need not stand behind him. Trust in the administration is broken and can’t be fixed with Miller there. For the good of the nation, and the rest of his second term, the president must fire and rebuke Miller. Anything less, and we will continue down this ruinous path, with no end in sight.
