Stephen Miller is the breathless voice of extreme Trumpism
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
There are two Donald Trump voices.
One is the voice with which we’re the most familiar: the rambling, eccentric Trump who tells familiar, overlapping stories with the consistent moral that he is right and others are wrong. This is the Trump who talks about being eaten by a shark or who marvels at the military canine (“I call it a dog”) as he’s discussing the killing of a terrorist leader.
Then there’s the other Trump, the teleprompter Trump. This is the one who offers an approximation of soaring rhetoric with a relatively monotonous delivery. The Trump who has gotten all of the things he wanted to talk about off his chest, so now he dutifully reads the prepared remarks promising sweeping change and the fulfillment of everyone’s dreams and blah blah blah.
It often feels tacked on because it often is. And it often doesn’t sound like Trump because it isn’t. It’s Stephen Miller.
Miller, as you’re probably aware, is the longtime Trump adviser who, in 2016, shifted from running the communications shop for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) to helping Trump craft policy during his presidential campaign — particularly on immigration, where Miller had established himself as a fervent hard-liner. He’s been with Trump since, writing many of Trump’s major speeches, though it’s often not the Miller-crafted lines that people remember.
Sometimes — like on social media — Miller speaks for himself. And when he does, you can get a pure, uncut sense of what Trumpism is about, a purer sense than you get from Trump himself, given all of his asides and tangents. You gain a sense of the niche Miller has created for himself in the annals of people who have served as the megaphones for political strongmen.
On Tuesday night, Miller joined a runner-up for that title: Fox News host Sean Hannity, one of the channel’s staffers who hasn’t yet been pledged a role in the new administration. (Miller has; he’ll be a deputy chief of staff.) Over the course of about eight minutes, Miller presented rhetoric about Trump and Trump’s electoral victory that was so over the top, you’d have to imagine that even Trump might have thought it a bit much. At times, Hannity seemed to.
“Stephen, how are you?” Hannity began.
“I am good, Sean, my old friend,” Miller replied. And then, without pausing: “After nine years, we are here, on the heels of a landslide like the world has never seen before, prepared under President Trump’s leadership to implement historical, transformative, long-awaited change to make this government accountable to the people of this country once again. It will be, as Donald Trump said, a new golden age for America.”
Hannity barely blinked, transitioning into a question about the administration’s plans. He could have noted that Trump’s victory was by no means a landslide, with Trump earning less than half of the votes cast and winning by a narrower margin than in any presidential contest since 2000. And that’s just when talking about the United States; Trump’s conversational partners in Russia and North Korea often do far better than that.
But it’s important for Miller and Trump to suggest that his mandate is robust and overwhelming because it serves as a justification for the administration’s sweeping plans.
On immigration, for example, Miller promised immediate action.
“It’s going to be at light speed, Sean,” he told Hannity. “The moment that President Trump puts his hand on that Bible and takes the oath of office, as he has said, the occupation ends, liberation day begins. He will immediately sign executive orders, sealing the border shut, beginning the largest deportation operation in American history, finding the criminal gangs, rapists, drug dealers and monsters that have murdered our citizens and sending them home.”
He may try, certainly. But as we saw the last time Trump was president, this is far easier said than done. Trump’s efforts to implement changes to immigration policy in 2017 were quickly met with legal pushback and losses in courtrooms nationwide. Trump wants to be a dictator on the first day of his presidency, as he has said, acting without restraint, but there are still restraints in place. Any suggestion that Trump’s “landslide” should counteract those restraints is, obviously, statistically unfounded and hostile to the balance of powers that defines the American system.
But Miller’s job isn’t to say what Trump can do and the hurdles he’ll face. It’s to breathlessly celebrate the triumphs of the deified figure he serves. Asked whether Trump would attempt to sidestep the Senate’s constitutionally articulated role in confirming Cabinet nominees if necessary, Miller (who had earlier described Trump’s picks as a “dream team”) immediately said he would.
“The president has won a mandate” — see above — “and he will use all lawful, constitutional means to fulfill that mandate on behalf of the people who voted for him in record numbers,” Miller said. The record set here, it seems, is “votes ever cast for Donald Trump,” which doesn’t really count. But you see how it works. Establish the standard as Trump being the overwhelming choice of the people and then frame opposition to him as opposition to those people.
The reality is that Trump remains a deeply polarizing political figure, one whose three presidential runs have earned the vote of less than a third of America’s adult population each time. His victory this month was in part a function of people who stayed home relative to 2020. But he and his team have plans to dramatically upend the American system and to do so while toppling the balance of powers articulated in the Constitution. To rationalize doing so, they point to the imagined dominance of his victory.
Miller’s voice is loudest among them, sometimes coming directly out of Trump’s mouth.
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Miller will be the second most powerful person in the Trump government.
If someone would have told me after all the SHIT this Piece of, put this country through, and all that we learned of Jan 6th, and we already should have knew...would again be elected and not face the crimes he SHOULD'VE faced, i'd have called them bonkers
More like a train wreck like the world has never seen before.
Miller calls the election "a landslide like the world has never seen." That is why he is considered the Goebbels of our times.
I guess that Miller lies just like his daddy.
A sad commentary on American when someone like Miller is in a position of power.