(CNN) — President Donald Trump responded to this week’s GOP drubbing by initially suggesting that he might soften his approach, expressing openness to collaborating with Democrats.
But after growing increasingly agitated by the midterm results, Trump abruptly changed course, replacing chief of staff Susie Wiles with longtime aide Stephen Miller amid encouragement from allies to ramp up the fight.
Miller’s elevation sent a clear message: Trump is doubling down.
Choosing a MAGA loyalist considered one of the most powerful hardline voices in his inner circle signaled a plan to flex even greater executive authority. Miller was the architect of Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign and other controversial policies that tested the bounds of White House power — yet also spurred voter backlash, contributing to the GOP’s historic electoral losses.
And even some Republicans expressed dismay about Miller’s selection, openly worrying that it represented an extreme misread of the motives behind voters’ wholesale rejection of GOP governance.
“We lost Latinos because of the deportation look,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana said in a local radio appearance, singling out Miller for “constantly talking about deportation.”
“The Republican Party needs to wake up and realize we’re going to be in the minority,” he said.
Trump took different advice.
As he stewed over Tuesday’s historic losses and surveyed friends and allies about what he should do, he heard from a contingent who urged him to replace Wiles — and consider replacing her with Miller, people familiar with the matter said.
Those allies argued that Miller had already proven his ability to militantly carry out Trump’s whims and, unlike outside candidates, wouldn’t require any time to get up to speed.
Plus, they contended, the midterm results had revealed a Republican Party that had lost the trust of Trump’s own MAGA movement. Repairing that relationship and getting the GOP back on the winning track would require a movement figure like Miller to do it.
It was a diagnosis far removed from many other Republicans’ view of the midterm results, which put responsibility for the losses squarely on Trump’s agenda and decisionmaking.
But given the choice, the people familiar said, Trump has always gravitated toward escalating the fight.
“On the key issues that impact MAGA and the administration, Stephen is very aggressive,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and close ally. “He’s a perfect pick.”
Looming confrontations with Democrats
The staff shakeup serves as an omen for what is now likely to be an increasingly confrontational two years between the Trump White House and Democrats newly in charge of Congress.
“He is the last person you want to hire if you want to try to work with the Democrats,” one Trump adviser said of Miller, who they characterized as “brilliant” but overly intense. “But no matter if it’s John Kelly or Susie or Stephen, at the end of the day, Donald Trump is his own chief of staff.”
The appointment marks the culmination of Miller’s decadelong ascent within Trump’s orbit, where he has long wielded so much influence that allies and enemies alike privately refer to him as “the prime minister.”
Miller has long argued for aggressively advancing Trump’s priorities on immigration, crime and overhauling government institutions, contending that the president has vast unilateral power to bypass Congress and carry out his agenda. He’s demonstrated a willingness to challenge legal precedents and administrative norms in pursuing his goals, while leveling incendiary accusations at critics standing in the way.
“The Democrat Party is not a political party,” Miller said at one point last year, in response to opposition to Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to various cities. “It is a domestic, extremist organization.”
Democratic lawmakers emboldened by their sweeping midterm victories, meanwhile, have vowed to launch a slew of investigations into the administration and its top officials, including Miller — while also promising to grind Trump’s agenda to a halt.
“Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said on Friday.
Against that backdrop, Trump’s selection of Miller as his top aide was viewed by some Democrats as akin to a show of defiance.
“That is those guys going from very bad to worse than you could possibly imagine,” Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine told CNN. “But that doesn’t surprise me a bit.”
Perhaps most immediately, Miller’s appointment — which Trump said takes effect on Monday — is likely to derail early hopes of negotiating some form of comprehensive immigration legislation. Democratic lawmakers, congressional aides and immigrant advocates had privately expressed optimism that the parties might coalesce behind such an effort in the coming months. But that’s unlikely to happen now.
“This is the clearest sign that (Trump’s) lame duck priority is to cause as much chaos as possible,” said Andrea Flores, founder of pro-immigration reform initiative Securing America’s Promise. “Calls to work with him on immigration reform are not realistic as long as Stephen Miller is in the White House.”
An immigration hardliner with increasing power
A self-assured and often-combative ideologue, Miller was among the earliest aides on Trump’s longshot 2016 campaign, where he honed the then-novice candidate’s message as a speechwriter and helped shape his forcefully anti-immigration platform.
Miller later followed Trump into the White House as a senior domestic policy aide, working primarily to advance a series of efforts aimed at further restricting immigration — including a family separation policy that triggered extended blowback among Democrats and even many Republicans.
Trump nevertheless came to regard Miller as among his most trusted advisers, in large part because of his ardent loyalty and frequent public defenses of him and his agenda.
After returning to the White House for Trump’s second term, Miller quickly grew his power — overseeing an unprecedented mass deportation operation while expanding his reach into other high-profile and controversial areas, like the administration’s frequent targeting and killing of alleged narcotraffickers in the Caribbean.
Inside the administration, Miller exerted immense pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to meet immigration arrest quotas of 3,000 people per day, while advocating for an increasingly restrictive approach to legal immigration as well.
“His goal is to reduce immigration — I don’t think there’s any secret about that,” Mark Krikorian — a Miller ally and director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limited immigration — said as the deportation operation reached its height late last year. “Not just managing the border or reducing illegal immigration. He’s an actual immigration restrictionist.”
The deportation campaign prompted viral scenes of violence in cities across the country, as federal immigration agents chased fleeing undocumented immigrants, clashed with protesters and, in several cases, mistakenly arrested US citizens.
The escalating situation ultimately led to the successive killings by federal agents of two Americans in Minnesota — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — that sparked nationwide anger and forced the administration to pull back on its efforts.
Miller adopted a relatively low profile in the immediate aftermath, as the administration sought to manage the fallout and adjust its tactics.
But he remained an influential figure within the White House and one of Trump’s closest confidants, eventually seizing a lead role in advocating for the administration’s anti-fraud initiatives in the final months before the midterms. And amid speculation that Wiles might depart after the elections, Miller’s allies worked to circulate his name as a potential successor to the top staff spot in the West Wing, the people familiar with the matter said.
Trump at the time flatly denied any plans to make changes to his senior team, insisting in mid-October that Wiles would remain at the White House “for a long time.”
But as little as three weeks later, the president was singing a different tune.
“Sometimes in life, you have to make moves,” he told reporters on Friday after announcing the staff shakeup. “Stephen’s been with me from the beginning. He gets it. Very good politically. And he’s a very good man.”
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