Who is Stephen Miller? The ‘wartime consigliere’ now running Trump’s White House

Washington: Joe Hockey, the ex-treasurer and former Australian ambassador to the US, vividly remembers his first meeting with Stephen Miller in 2016. Hockey had contacted Donald Trump’s campaign team, believing the real estate developer and reality TV star would become the Republican nominee for president.

Miller, then a policy adviser, and Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis came to the ambassador’s residence in Washington on a Friday afternoon. Clovis ate Tim Tams while Miller asked the questions.

“No one will talk to us, no country has reached out to us,” Miller said. “Why are you doing it?” Hockey replied: “Because I think you’re going to win.”

By January of the following year, when Trump had not only won the nomination but was in the White House, Hockey helped smooth over the discord caused by the Obama administration’s refugee deal with Australia. It famously boiled over in an angry phone call between Trump and then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

In Hockey’s telling, those early encounters proved critical. “I reminded them that when no other country would talk to them, we did. And they have never forgotten. Stephen’s never forgotten,” Hockey says now.

Miller was a close aide during Trump’s first term, but became even more instrumental in the second, wielding enormous power as deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser. Now the 41-year-old has become the 33rd White House chief of staff, a famously critical and demanding job with its own storied history.

‘People should not underestimate him.’

Joe Hockey, former Australian ambassador to the US

To say that Miller’s appointment last week stunned Washington is not quite right. There had been rumours for weeks that Susie Wiles was poised to move on. Miller, a long-serving and loyal deputy, was always going to be a top contender.

Still, the decision was momentous. Miller is known as a hardline ideologue (many call him an extremist) whose inclination is not to compromise with the Democrats (or anyone else) but to fight, particularly on immigration. His ascension signalled Trump was gearing up for battle.

One source described Miller to US news outlet Semafor as a “wartime consigliere”, a depiction that became the next day’s headline on page one of News Corp tabloid The New York Post.

Journalist and filmmaker Chris Whipple writes in Vanity Fair that Democratic strategist James Carville texted him shortly after Trump promoted Miller: “This is like Caligula’s appointment of his horse as consul.”

Hockey says Miller matches Trump’s own instincts much more than Wiles, a more establishment Republican operative with deep ties in Washington. “President Trump is determined to take a more aggressive stand,” he says. “Trump is at first instinct a fighter. He’s a pugilist. He will always feel the need to defend his corner.”

Miller is the man to do so. Born in Santa Monica, California, into a Jewish family that fled Russian pogroms in Belarus between 1903 and 1906, he was outspoken and combative from an early age. In his college years, he appeared on right-wing talk shows and gave provocative speeches as he ran for student leadership.

“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?” a young Miller says in a grainy video as other students booed and laughed.

He continued to build his conservative profile at Duke University, where he wrote for the student paper and appeared in national media. Notably, he defended three lacrosse players accused of rape, while most others assumed their guilt. The claim turned out to be a hoax and the accuser, a black woman, went to prison years later for murder. Miller portrayed the case as an example of reverse racism against the three white players.

Miller has long been accused of being an extremist and white nationalist, characterisations he rejects. In 2020, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a Democrat, labelled Miller “a known white nationalist and believer of white supremacist ideology”, and called for his resignation.

This week, Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, who is set to become Speaker from early next year, made similar claims. “Stephen Miller is a stone-cold racist,” Jeffries said. “His track record speaks for itself. And I’ve got zero interest in working with that kind of individual.”

This masthead sought an interview with Miller for this story. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers praised Miller for overseeing Trump’s “commonsense agenda” to secure the border, stop illegal aliens entering the country, reduce fentanyl overdoses and crime, and decimate dangerous cartels.

“The Democrats are the ones whose immigration policies are extremist and anti-American,” she said. “The American people do not want a wide-open border and a mass invasion of illegal aliens.”

Rogers also said it was “the hardcore, partisan Democrats” who refused to work with Trump and blocked many popular policies.

“Stephen Miller has a track record of spearheading bipartisan efforts: public safety reform, making our cities such as Washington DC and Memphis safe again, drug pricing transparency and unleashing a nuclear energy renaissance,” she said. “The Democrats are attacking Stephen because they know he is incredibly effective in Washington.”

‘A horrible decision’

But it’s not just Democrats who are wary of Miller’s appointment as White House chief of staff. Republican congressman Marlin Stutzman of Indiana told Fox News it was a “horrible decision”, arguing that Miller’s immigration policies destroyed the party’s goodwill with Latino voters.

That is a similar view to that expressed by News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson, who told this masthead last week that “to ignore Hispanic America is to ignore contemporary America”, although he was not speaking about Miller specifically.

Miller has been focused on immigration from day one. He drafted one of the president’s earliest and most consequential executive orders in 2017, prohibiting entry by foreign nationals from certain countries – the notorious “Muslim ban”.

Trump signed it just a day before his infamous phone call with Malcolm Turnbull, and it made it harder for the president to turn around and honour the deal to accept 1250 refugees whom Australia had banished to Manus Island and Nauru.

It also meant the Australians had to deal with Miller, whose hardline reputation was already evident. “It was cold,” one former Australian official said of Miller’s manner, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The main difference was the lack of warmth that is usually so clear between the Australian and US systems, particularly in what you would regard as the foreign policy, national security, defence areas.

“[With] all the others, it’s not as though they were not strong people who had to make tough decisions, but the warmth was also there. It just wasn’t there with him.”

The official said Miller did not aim to foster a personable relationship. “If he saw a problem, he was going to charge through it. My judgment was he was not the one who was going to compromise and help you.”

Miller is known for his outbursts at other officials; in 2020, The New Yorker reported that he “has a habit of berating officials, especially lower-ranking ones, for an agency’s perceived failures”.

Others, however, had a different experience. Hockey says Miller was always “very polite”, quietly spoken and reflective in person – not at all like the loud, aggressive figure viewers see on television.

‘We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties … But we live in a world, the real world, that is governed by strength.’

Stephen Miller

“People should not underestimate him,” Hockey says. “He’s very smart, and he’s high conviction. He’s got a strong conviction about immigration, but he is contemplative, tactical, strategic and from his perspective, he’ll fight as hard as he can. He’s a fighter.”

Last year, rumours in Washington suggested Miller was involved in a tense encounter with Australia’s then-ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, and that Miller, like other veteran Trump aides, remembered Rudd’s old (and deleted) social media posts about the president.

The rumour was never corroborated by a first-hand account, and Rudd said it was not true. At any rate, he and wife Therese Rein entertained Miller and Miller’s wife, Katie, at the ambassador’s residence, and according to a source, it was a “delightful” evening. Rudd also had several meetings with Miller at the White House during his tenure.

Like Trump, Miller knows how to use American power, against friend or foe. Days after US forces abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, he went on CNN and eviscerated the rules-based international order.

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Miller said. “But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”

As an ideologue, Miller is said to be impervious to lobbying, and in his first days at the helm, he has instituted new rules for White House staff meeting with lobbyists: they must now seek advance approval from the White House counsel’s office, Politico reported on Friday.

Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist and former managing partner of Firehouse Strategies, said it was wrong to portray Miller as a zealot and ideologue who couldn’t work the other side of the aisle. “A lot of people who talk about Stephen Miller are not aware of the reputation that he has behind the scenes,” Terrill said.

“If you talk to the folks that worked with him hand in hand, they will tell you that he is someone who is very strategic, yes, but who is very much able to work with people … He’s got a great reputation.”

At the same time, with Democrats controlling Congress, Trump would have to use executive orders to govern, Terrill said, and that’s where Miller was supreme.

“He knows how to craft and work those executive orders to make them very effective … What is also going to be important [for Trump] is finishing these last two years very strong.”