How powerful is Stephen Miller?

0:00Mia Venkat:Stephen Miller isn't an elected official, but there are few people with more power in America today. I want to thank Stephen Miller, who's right back in the audience right there. Here's President Trump speaking to reporters at the White House last October. As the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and one of President Trump's longest-serving aides, Miller's been the driving force behind many of Trump's core policies. He's known for having extreme views, even by the president's own standards. And I'd love to have him come up and explain his true feelings. Maybe not his truest feelings.

0:36Mia Venkat:That might be going a little bit too far. Miller is the architect of Trump's anti-immigrant crackdown. He's pushed for a narrowing of legal immigration pathways and led the push in ICE recruitment and deployment. And he's been in the spotlight recently as a driving force behind the plan to capture Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro. The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. In a much circulated interview this week with CNN, Miller said we live in a world, quote, governed by strength and force, and also asserted that Greenland should be part of the United States.

1:14Mia Venkat:We're a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. Consider this. Stephen Miller is largely credited with channeling President Trump's desires and making his vision of America real. What motivates Stephen Miller? From NPR, I'm Sarah McCammon.

1:39Mia Venkat:This message comes from the Pulitzer finalist NHPR team. Their new four-part series, Safe to Drink, investigates one of the largest water contamination events in New Hampshire's history and the people who fought for answers. Follow Safe to Drink wherever you're listening. This message comes from the BBC with their podcast The Global Story. With Asma Khalid in D.C. and Tristan Redman in London, The Global Story brings you daily news from where the world and America meet. Search for The Global Story from BBC Podcasts. This message comes from TED Talks Daily, the podcast from TED. Curious how to introduce yourself so you actually get hired?

2:19Mia Venkat:Or why people are starting to sound like ChatGPT? There's a TED Talk for that. Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

2:33Mia Venkat:It's Consider This from NPR. Stephen Miller is a polarizing character, and we know that President Trump trusts him. So how far-reaching is his role in our government?

2:44Ashley Parker:Everyone around the president knows that when a directive comes from Stephen Miller, they view it as coming from the president directly.

2:51Mia Venkat:That's Ashley Parker, a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her new article is called The Wrath of Stephen Miller. I spoke to her earlier, and I started by asking her just how powerful Stephen Miller is in the administration.

3:05Ashley Parker:He's incredibly powerful. Steve Bannon and other people jokingly call him the prime minister. And I think the public in general, especially from the first term, associates Stephen Miller with Trump's hardline immigration policies. And that's certainly true. He has a big, big hand in immigration. But one thing we were trying to capture with this profile is that immigration is not the only thing that Stephen Miller has his hands in. And not just hands, but has a major, major role on everything from immigration to homeland security to law enforcement in our nation's streets to foreign policy to trade and even to education.

3:48Ashley Parker:And a lot of the controversial policies coming out of the administration are either being dreamed up by Stephen Miller or executed by Stephen Miller.

3:58Mia Venkat:You spoke with several folks within the administration about Miller's style, and you describe him as, quote, the pulsing human id of a president who is already almost pure id. What does that mean, Ashley? And how does that style shape the way that the administration is functioning?

4:16Ashley Parker:So Stephen Miller, one thing he's very clear about is that he views his job as taking what President Trump wants to do and executing it ruthlessly and urgently. And what's interesting is there are areas where Stephen and Trump has joked about this in public is far more extreme than even President Trump. And so Stephen behind the scenes will very vigorously argue his case, make his points, make his pitch. But once Trump has decided something, he's not like some of the people, especially in the first term, right, who would tell Trump all the reasons he can't do it or why it's the wrong thing or try to quietly undermine him.

5:01Ashley Parker:Once Donald Trump has decided what he wants to do, Stephen is going to go out there and do it. But you talk about Miller as somebody who has a very strong point of view.

5:12Mia Venkat:He casts political disagreements as this existential struggle between good and evil, for example. I mean, how much is Miller shaping or trying to shape the president's viewpoint versus reflecting or amplifying Trump?

5:28Ashley Parker:Well, again, it's a combination of both, right? For starters, Stephen Miller would not be able to work for someone with whom he was not broadly aligned because one of the things that people told us that they really like about Stephen Miller in the administration, and this might seem a little counterintuitive, is that he's a zealot. They said, we always know where he stands. That said, in some instances, he is more hardline, especially on immigration, than President Trump is. And in those instances, again, he very intensely and very forcefully makes his case in private. And so I do think there is some shaping of the president there just because we know President Trump is often persuaded by the last person he talked to or by people he talks to frequently.

6:19Ashley Parker:But again, at the end of the day, there have been some disagreements between the two of them. And when there are those disagreements, Stephen Miller does go out and do what the president wants, regardless of his personal views. But there's not that much daylight between them.

6:34Mia Venkat:A decade ago, Stephen Miller was a speechwriter for Trump. What led to his ascendance between the two Trump administrations?

6:42Ashley Parker:I mean, he was still incredibly powerful in the first Trump term. The difference was the same guardrails that kind of constrained President Trump in that first term also constrained Stephen Miller. There were people at the Department of Homeland Security who, when he did something that they felt was too extreme or was morally reprehensible, would not follow through on his directive. And they knew that at the time when John Kelly was leading that agency, he would protect them. All of those guardrails and all of those people are gone now. And the second thing is, much like this more emboldened, unfettered, unchained President Trump we're seeing now, Stephen Miller underwent the same process.

7:29Ashley Parker:And so he basically spent his four years out of power working quietly and privately to ensure that if he and Trump came back to office, he would have all the levers and tools of the federal bureaucracy at his disposal.

7:46Mia Venkat:Before I let you go, Ashley, what is it that you want people to understand about Stephen Miller and about his role in the Trump administration at this moment?

7:55Ashley Parker:I think it's important to understand a couple of things, how close to the president he is, just how broad his purview is and how he has his hand in policies that people might not expect, like the Trump administration's war against higher education and against Harvard. People, again, they think of immigration, they maybe think of foreign policy, but they don't necessarily think of all the other areas where Stephen Miller is playing a role. And I think the other thing that's important to understand about Stephen Miller is he's confided in friends and colleagues that he does like playing this role of the gleeful contrarian or the troll who makes liberals' heads explode.

8:39Ashley Parker:But at this point, the caricature that we see on TV and interviews on CNN and elsewhere has now become his true character. There is not a real difference between public and private Stephen Miller in the intensity of his conviction.

8:56Mia Venkat:Ashley Parker is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her new article is called The Wrath of Stephen Miller. Ashley, thanks so much for your time. Oh, of course. Thank you for doing this. This episode was produced by Mia Venkat. It was edited by Sarah Robbins and Rebecca Metzler. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

9:19Mia Venkat:It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sarah McCammon.

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