Consider This from NPR - How powerful is Stephen Miller?

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

As the deputy chief of staff for policy and one of President Trump’s longest-serving aides, Stephen Miller has been the driving force behind many of Trump’s core policies. Ashley Parker, staff writer for The Atlantic, explains why Stephen Miller has President Trump’s ear.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail]. This episode was produced by Mia Venkat. It was edited by Sarah Robbins and Rebekah Metzler. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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 aids, 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. love to have him come up and explain his true feelings, but maybe not his truest feelings. 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 insurance. 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.

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. 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? Everyone around the president knows that when a directive comes from Stephen Miller, they view it as coming from the president directly. 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.

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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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? 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 hard line, 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. 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. A decade ago, Stephen Miller was a speechwriter for Trump. What led to his ascendance between the two Trump administrations? 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, unchaired, President Trump we're seeing now, Stephen Miller underwent the same process. 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. 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.

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, right? 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. 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 convictions. 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. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sarah McCammon. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to consider this sponsor-free through Amazon music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Consider This Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.