Donald Trump has signaled his strategic direction in his final two years in office under an ovewhelmingly Democratic Congress — a doubling down on his darkest impulses.
His swift cabinet shakeup today, replacing Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with Domestic Policy Advisor Stephen Miller, is a clear sign Trump intends to push the more authoritarian policies that have marked his administration.
Trump is retreating into his metaphorical bunker for his final days in office and taking has most hard-line advisor with him to shape strategy. In effect, he’s like Hitler paring his small inner circle to a cadre of fanatical staff, think Joseph Goebbels.
More Reading: New Trump Rape Claims Demand Congressional Probe of Sex Trafficking, Epstein Role
Goebbels served as Hitler’s chief architect of the Nazi party’s public image and ideological underpinnings.
Prior to his elevation, Miller was the architect of Trump’s domestic policy and homeland security. He is the driving force behnd Trump’s hardline immigration policy and is widely recognized for his hardline nationalism and aggressive rhetoric toward Trump’s political opponents.
His efforts directly resulted in the forced separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents at the southern border. Miller defended the policy as a “simple decision” to send a message that no one was exempt from strict enforcement.
More Reading: Trump’s Ruinous Canadian Trade War Can Be Summed Up With One Word — Aluminium
His progressive crackdown on immigration also included pushing aggressively for first-term executive orders that blocked immigrants from several Muslim-majority nations. He also led Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in his second term to stem immigration.
He directed the administration’s pressure campaigns against elite universities over so-called DEI cultural and ideological policies. He helped orchestrate U.S. military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in international waters and asserted a doctrine of sweeping U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere.
Miller’s public statements and speeches he wrote for Trump repeatedly featured fascist and authoritarian tropes.
In Trump’s speech in Poland in 2017, Miller had penned the line: “Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”
More Reading: Trump, the King of Shell Companies, Faces Legal Challenge Over Gutting of Disclosure Law
The language, critics argued, was lifted out of right-wing, white nationalist “clash of civilizations” ideology.
During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, also in 2017, Miller declared that the president’s national security powers “will not be questioned,” recalling the broad powers bestowed on historic dictators.
Miller has also been the driving force behind Trump’s most controversal statements as well as his own sharp attacks on political opponents.
He’s framed statements using combative and derogatory references, describing political opponents as illegitimate existential threats to the nation. He said Democrats were “not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”
He describes Democrats as either “radical extremists” who want to actively dismantle American institutions, or “cowards.”
More Reading: Trump, Putin, the New Axis of Evil: Illegal Diesel Deal, Ukraine Betrayal a Vile Act by a President
He has pushed an aggressively hawkish stance on the Iran war, and favors military dominance to assert the administration’s views globally.
In fact, Miller has done more to drive a wedge in American society than even Trump or other cabinet members. It’s exactly those tactics that sowed the seeds for the Democratic blowout in the midterm elections.
Many observers thought the GOP loss of control in the House and Senate by wide margins and the signifcant down ballot gains by Democrats in traditional red states, would temper Trump’s more autocratic impulses.
But his elevation of Miller suggests just the opposite.
More Reading: The Trump Paradox: Every Success Is Followed by Self Destruction, And It’s Happening Now
Rather than interpreting the midterm sweep as a mandate to moderate the administration’s platform, Miller’s promotion to Chief of Staff has been widely viewed by political analysts as a defiant doubling-down on his hardline agenda, according to media reports.
Wiles, on the other hand, was seen as a moderating force on Trump.
She reportedly tried to influence his decisions on core issues including his immigration crackdown, according to people with knowledge of her role cited by The New York Times.
Her influence, however, was limited, even by her own admission, and Trump pushed the limits of executive power during her tenure. As the political situation deteriorated after Trump launched the Iran war, she reportedly was isolated and her influence diminished.
As Trump braces for a wave of Democratic congressional investigations, it seems clear he plans a scorched earth policy with Miller as its architect.
The image on this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”