Editor’s note: Donald Trump on Friday named Stephen Miller as his White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles, just days after a blue tsunami swept the country – a clear rebuke of the policies Miller is the very architect of.
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Miller → name → policies
Below, we’re resharing Swin and Andrew’s recent and deeply reported profile of Miller, who was already the most powerful unelected bureaucrat in the country and responsible for some of the Trump administration’s most outrageous and shocking policies.
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who → reshare → policies
The United States is now run by someone whose critics and victims routinely dub an American “psycho,” a man who revels in the pain and suffering of his enemies and his prey.
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who → run → enemies
Indeed, many of his allies, and his past and present colleagues, would describe him using precisely the same word.
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many → describe → word
We are, of course, talking about Stephen Miller, not his boss, Donald Trump.
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We → talk → Miller
Miller, who serves as Trump’s top policy architect and one of the president’s most committed loyalists, doesn’t care about human life the way you or I do, former and current Trump administration officials who’ve worked with him tell Zeteo.
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who → serve → Zeteo
Several of these sources actually quite like Miller.
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Several → like → Miller
Still, the degree to which Miller does not care about – or at least tolerates – the loss of human lives in the pursuit of his and President Trump’s policy vision has unnerved, or disturbed, some of his Republican colleagues, multiple Trump advisers and U.S. government officials recount.
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advisers → care → colleagues
Some of his associates in and close to the administration even accuse him of intentionally trying to push major U.S. cities to riot, to create a pretext for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, an early 19th-century law, so that he could send thousands of active-duty and National Guard troops to fully occupy those urban areas.
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he → accuse → areas
One source directly familiar with Miller’s private deliberations tells Zeteo: “Stephen wanted to provoke a very strong response, so that the president would deploy troops.
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president → tell → troops
It has been just under two years since Trump won the presidency for the second time, and the scale of democratic backsliding, rampant corruption, and sheer violence unleashed on this continent and others is remarkably difficult to tabulate.
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scale → win → continent
The administration has normalized putting troops in the streets; deploying masked, violent immigration agents to kidnap and intimidate and kill people; punishing immigrants, including many with a legal right to be here, by shipping them to dangerous countries, including places where they have no ties, simply to be cruel; murdering supposed drug smugglers with regularity in international waters; tearing apart the core constitutional right to due process at every opportunity, so that people can’t challenge the government’s claims against them before they are removed or killed; politicizing every lever of the government so that it targets their enemies, and only their enemies, as part of a swarming attack on Democrats and the left and liberal nonprofit and political infrastructure; actively ignoring the First Amendment; spewing the most blatant kinds of racism from the White House, including at Somali Americans and Haitians; plotting in broad daylight to rig elections and subvert the American democratic order; and so, so much more.
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it → normalize → order
On Trump’s behalf, Miller has overseen, or orchestrated, all of it.
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Miller → oversee → it
He has led Trump’s deportation operations and the president’s efforts to target and selectively prosecute his enemies at an intensely granular level.
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He → lead → level
That includes overseeing what a Trump adviser described to Zeteo as the administration’s “Must Deport list.”
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adviser → include → list
When Miller has discussed behind closed doors the administration’s deportations to third-countries (where the immigrants have no ties), he has explicitly said that it is better to strike those agreements with nations with lousy human rights records – in part because those regimes often do what they’re told by the United States, sources who’ve been in the room with him say.
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who → discuss → him
It is impossible to come to any other conclusion: At almost every single meaningful turn of the second Trump era, the president’s lead policy author has sought to make the government’s crackdowns more painful, and less humane, for its countless dragnet victims and their families.
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crackdowns → come → victims
Let that be his, and his boss’s, legacy – and perhaps their undoing.
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that → let → ?
The Aporia
