Miller in the Oval Office on Aug. 25.
Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
Inside the White House, Stephen Miller Is Making His Vision of America Real
From immigration to Latin America policy, the White House adviser excels at channeling the president’s desires.
On Jan. 3, Stephen Miller was in a secure room at Mar-a-Lago, where he and senior cabinet officials and military leaders monitored US airstrikes in Caracas with President Donald Trump. They watched in real time, according to a senior White House official, as elite Delta forces captured Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro. Hours later, Miller was lurking on the outer edge of a televised press conference where Trump explained his rationale for the decision to bomb Venezuela and arrest its president. On that occasion, Miller ceded the limelight to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who flanked the president during the presser. But he didn’t play coy when CNN’s Jake Tapper interviewed him on Jan. 5. “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”
Miller’s leading role in mapping out the administration’s Venezuela strategy is merely the latest sign of his influence and wildly expansive portfolio in Trump’s second term. “He seems comparable to a cabinet member,” says close Trump adviser Newt Gingrich. “People who can get things done are enormously valuable,” adds the former house speaker. “As a result of Stephen’s effectiveness, Trump has a willingness to see Stephen as a journeyman, like a baseball player who can play six or seven different positions.”