SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Stephen Miller isn't an elected official, but there are a few people with more power in America today. As the 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 the architect of the anti-immigrant crackdown 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, Nicolás Maduro. In a much-circulated interview this week on 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. Here to help us unpack Miller's influence and direction is Ashley Parker, staff writer for The Atlantic and the lead author on a new piece called "The Wrath Of Stephen Miller." Welcome.
ASHLEY PARKER: Thanks for having me.
MCCAMMON: Ashley, simply put, how powerful is Stephen Miller in this administration?
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 hard-line 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.
MCCAMMON: 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?
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. 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.
MCCAMMON: But you talk about Miller as somebody who has very - 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?
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 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.
MCCAMMON: A decade ago, Stephen Miller was a speech writer for Trump. What led to his ascendance between the two Trump administrations?
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 leaving 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. 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.
MCCAMMON: 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?
PARKER: I think it's important to understand a couple 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.
MCCAMMON: 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.
PARKER: Oh, of course. Thank you for doing this. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
