Kathrine Frich
Now the hardline anti-immigration and anti-communist aide has even more room to operate.
Big titles in Washington usually mean big-picture work.
Most senior officials leave the daily grind to their junior staffers, content to steer the ship from a quiet corner office.
Every now and then, though, someone reaches the top by refusing to stay in their lane.
Inside the machine
That hands-on habit is how Stephen Miller gets his way in the capital, according to HuffPost. Last week, President Donald Trump tapped Miller to replace Republican veteran Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff following the party’s brutal losses in the midterm elections.
Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official from Trump’s first term who once joined the internal “quiet resistance” against the president, knows Miller’s methods well.
Speaking on “The News Agents” podcast, Taylor described the new chief of staff as a “ferocious micromanager” who spreads his “tentacles” across every tiny corner of the federal government to push the White House agenda through.
“That’s something that made Stephen very formidable and very effective, is that he understands the government bureaucracy, and he is willing to jump down into meetings where they would never expect him,” Taylor told the podcast, as cited by HuffPost.
Late-night calls
Rank never mattered to Miller when he wanted something done. Even low-level employees working far from the West Wing could suddenly hear his voice on the line during a routine check-in.
“Think about the most junior staff at the most remote office in government,” Taylor explained on “The News Agents” podcast. “Stephen was the type of person that would surprise them on their morning phone call and show up and say, ‘This is Stephen Miller at the White House.’”
And the clock did not stop at five. According to Taylor, Miller regularly rang up subordinates long after the workday ended, noting: “It sounds like if you’re in the job that I was in, [there are] late-night phone calls every single weeknight to the point that your spouse starts asking you questions.”
Now holding the top staff job in the West Wing, the hardline anti-immigration and anti-communist aide has even more room to operate.
As HuffPost reported, Miller has already championed Trump’s drive to scrap birthright citizenship, go after universities over campus antisemitism and affirmative action rules, and fight what he calls a “vast domestic terror movement” of left-wing groups inside the United States.
