What did Donald Trump do today?

He responded to a massive rejection of his violent attacks on American communities by promoting their architect.

Trump announced today that he was replacing his current chief of staff, Susie Wiles, with her deputy Stephen Miller. Miller is generally regarded as the architect of Trump's brutal immigration crackdown, which has seen American citizens arrested under false pretenses, legal immigrants who had broken no American laws summarily deported in chains, children separated from their parents and put in cages, and entire cities subjected to martial law.

 

Those tactics horrified even Trump supporters who wanted better immigration control, and were a direct cause of the massive nationwide backlash against Trump in this past Tuesday's election. Miller's appointment, which comes as many other administration officials are jumping ship or signaling that they're about to, is being taken as a sign that Trump does not intend to heed those warnings.

Miller is a white nationalist whose anti-immigrant and racist views are a matter of record going back to his high school days, despite being the descendant of penniless Jewish refugees. Miller's own uncle called him an "immigration hypocrite" and compared him to his immigrant great-grandfather, Wolf-Lieb Glosser:

I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.

Miller has a proven track record of pushing Trump even further into scorched-earth territory on immigration matters. An extremist even by Trump administration standards on immigration, Miller reportedly screamed at ICE officials last year when they failed to meet the targets he wanted for his mass deportation campaign. He's also a driving force behind the Trump administration's full-scale retreat from civil rights enforcement, restricting entire branches of law enforcement to considering only examples of "anti-white racism."

But Miller is also a veteran of the constant battle among White House staff, going back to Trump's first term, to manipulate him into conceding day-to-day control of policy. Miller spent much of the opening months of Trump's second term in a power struggle with Elon Musk, trashing the billionaire mega-donor on social media. Miller was generally understood to be the source of several embarrassing stories about Musk's drug abuse and the complete failure of DOGE to reduce government spending. In a tawdry subplot, Miller's wife, Katie Miller, who had worked for Musk, was rumored to be in a romantic or open relationship with him.

Miller's appointment is not being received well by Republicans who survived Tuesday's rout, who—not without reason—blame Miller's strategy of deliberate cruelty, unrestrained violence, and racist taunting in his immigration crackdowns as the reason that millions of Latino citizens turned against their party. One Republican member of Congress, informed by a reporter of Miller's promotion, responded, "Please tell me you're lying to me right now, just to get a reaction."

Why does this matter?

• Presidents are responsible for the actions of the people they give power to. 

• The last thing Trump needs is encouragement to be a racist sociopath.