We have a new shadow president – and he can play Trump like a fiddle | Arwa Mahdawi

Has the midterms bloodbath made Donald Trump go all woke? Has his party’s historic rebuke finally made him reflect on his actions and forced a road to Damascus moment?

Of course not; this is the world’s least introspective man we are talking about. However, for about 30 seconds on Sunday, the usually incoherent president managed the amazing feat of speaking a little bit of sense.

His hardline deportation policy might have gone too far, he admitted to 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat. “I think it might be too tough, yeah,” he said. “And a lot of people would say that it’s great. But a lot of people think it’s too tough.”

This isn’t the first time that Trump has appeared to question the cruel immigration strategy that has been a hallmark of his presidency. In a midterm post-mortem, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had expressed some frustration with his right-hand man Stephen Miller.

“After first lady Melania Trump complained about people she knew getting deported, the president would tell aides that the architect of his aggressive immigration campaign, Stephen Miller, had gone too far,” the Journal said.

Despite this rare glimmer of insight, however, it seems that Trump is determined to ensure Miller goes even further. On Friday, Trump made Miller, who has been condemned as a white nationalist by numerous lawmakers and human rights groups, his new chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles.

It was, as the Guardian’s David Smith put it, a “middle finger to millions of American voters”. A clear signal that the president has no intention of spending the remainder of his presidency trying to reach across the aisle and reconcile with his political adversaries. Rather, he seems intent on burning everything down. And in Miller he has found the perfect arsonist.

While Miller’s promotion was shocking, it should not have been a surprise. The 41-year-old has always been one of the most influential people in Trump’s orbit. Indeed a January Bloomberg profile noted: “Some of the president’s longtime aides privately call Miller ‘the prime minister’.”

That same profile noted that if Wiles were to ever step down as chief of staff, Miller would be one of the top picks to replace her. With his unusually wide remit and oversized influence, Miller had arguably been doing the job already.

Unlike some of the buffoons that Trump surrounds himself with, Miller is competent, calculating, and highly organized. His views don’t shift whenever the political winds do like a certain vice-president: he is an ideologue on a mission to reshape the face of the US and, indeed, the world. He firmly believes that might makes right, stating that the US has the right to annex Greenland because the “tiny country” of Denmark can’t adequately defend it. As the architect of Trump 1.0’s family separation policy, he is responsible for removing thousands of children from their immigrant parents. And he has declared war on Americans who do not subscribe to his beliefs. When Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was killed by federal immigration agents in January, for example, Miller branded him “a domestic terrorist.”

Even as a student at Santa Monica High School, he was an odious edgelord who reveled in cruelty. A young Miller campaigned for student government where he positioned himself as a maverick. “I will say and I will do things that no one else in their right mind would do,” he says in a recorded speech obtained by the Washington Post in 2017.

Later he said: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?” In Miller’s worldview, some people are simply better than others.

The teenage Miller was booed off stage by his peers, but he is getting the last laugh now: the new chief of staff has spent his entire life working towards this moment. Indeed, when Trump lost the 2020 election, Miller co-founded a conservative non-profit called America First Legal, focused on issues like dismantling DEI and cracking down on immigration. He developed a playbook for everything he wanted to achieve and has spent Trump’s second term putting it into action.

Miller is not just the chief of staff; he is arguably the shadow president. And while Trump may be a lame duck, his chief of staff is just getting started.

One of the many things that makes Miller so dangerous is that he knows how to play Trump like a fiddle in order to advance his agenda. There is a reason he has remained by the president’s side when the White House has been a revolving door. He’s almost as good as sucking up to Trump as he is at terrorizing immigrant children.

In his first public remarks after being announced as chief of staff, Miller pledged “total devotion” to Trump in a speech dripping with obsequiousness. “If it wasn’t for President Trump the United States of America would not exist right now,” Miller declared.

All that said, while Miller is a dangerous man there may be a silver lining to his promotion. His appointment could complicate the Trump administration’s relationship with the corporate world, for example.

“This will be a big change,” a worried senior lobbyist at a ⁠Trump-aligned told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “Miller is there to focus on political priorities, like immigration and tariffs, stuff Trump cares about, and won’t have the same approach as Susie, who understood policies have unintended consequences.”

His appointment has also caused some internal strife among Republicans who blame Miller for the midterms and are angry that he has been rewarded with a promotion.

And Miller’s new position has made it very clear to Democrats that there is no reasoning with Trump in his lame duck period. No compromising with a man whose chief of staff has called your party “a domestic extremist organization”.

Miller is going to do a lot of damage in the next two years; there’s no doubt about that. But, in the best-case scenario, there is a chance that Miller’s eagerness to burn everything down will take the Republican party with it.

“Appointing Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff send one clear message: Trump hasn’t learned a thing from the Republicans’ midterm wipeout,” the group Republicans Against Trump tweeted. “He’s not interested in working across the aisle or getting anything done. Keep this up, and Republicans will lose in 2028.”