3 hours ago
6
If you want to understand what’s happening in the US right now, and what is likely to happen next, don’t just focus on Donald Trump. Rather, pay close attention to Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. It’s increasingly clear that Miller, a man who has said that “America is for Americans and Americans only” and who is on a mission to “save the west” is the driving force behind the Trump administration’s most extreme policies. Per a recent Bloomberg profile, some of Trump’s aides even privately call Miller “the prime minister”.
Miller’s influence stretches across both foreign and domestic policy. Those masked immigration agents pulling people off the street, and occasionally shooting unarmed citizens in the face? You can trace their aggressive tactics back to Miller. The plot to get rid of birthright citizenship? Miller’s hands are all over it. The capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro? He helped plan it. The campaign to Maga-fy universities? Miller again! All right-leaning roads seem to lead back to Miller.
While the likes of JD Vance have aggressively shape-shifted to curry favour with the president, 40-year-old Miller has long been a zealot. In 2017, one of his former high school classmates told the New York Times that a teenage Miller informed him they couldn’t be friends because of his Latino heritage. He also reportedly complained that Spanish-speaking classmates ought to speak English. A 16-year-old Miller ran for class president, and gave a speech (which Jimmy Kimmel recently resurfaced) where he asked his fellow students: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”
He didn’t win that particular election, but Miller’s been rising up the political ranks ever since. In 2013, as an aide to then-senator Jeff Sessions, he made a name for himself fighting a bipartisan immigration reform bill. Then, under Trump 1.0, Miller was the mastermind behind the separation of immigrant families at the US-Mexico border. His uncle publicly lambasted him for this, noting that the family descended from Jewish refugees escaping persecution in Europe, but Stephen bonded with Katie Waldman, who was then an immigration spokesperson, over their shared opposition to migrants. They’re currently married; she’s now Katie Miller and, like all the worst people in America, she has a podcast.
I suffered through the very first episode of that tedious podcast, by the way, and learned a fun fact about Miller. His passions don’t just include kidnapping foreign heads of state. He also bloody loves a bit of mayonnaise. Indeed, in her podcast, Katie Miller made it sound like the whitest of white condiments is the only thing her husband eats. Which seems a little too apt, doesn’t it? A bit like the fact Ivanka Trump has a super-white dog called Winter. It all just sort of feels like America: The Final Season has been scripted by lazy AI.
Anyway, ever since hearing that podcast, I’ve had intermittent intrusive thoughts of Miller standing barefoot in the luminous light of a fridge spooning mayonnaise into his mouth, straight from the jar. Yes, I know, I know, I should probably go to therapy. So should Miller, obviously. In fact, we could solve a lot of problems if someone could just round up Elon Musk, Trump, Miller, and JD Vance and force them all into intensive therapy.
Seriously, though, I think the reason the mayonnaise anecdote has stuck with me is because it’s a reminder that while Miller may be in a position of extraordinary power, he is ultimately still just a man, one who likely has grease stains on his T-shirts. While the ghouls hellbent on bringing authoritarianism to America, and misery to their self-declared enemies, may think of themselves as demi-gods, they are, ultimately, just mere mortals.
I say this not to humanise Miller, but to put him, and the egomaniacs around him, in perspective. What people like Miller want most of all is for us to fear them; that’s why they’re all so obsessed with talking about strength and force and power. And, yes, we should all be afraid of Miller’s brutish vision of the world. We should be worried about what Miller is doing. But we should also make sure to laugh at him; there is nothing thin-skinned authoritarians hate more than being laughed at. And we should never forget that, amid all the trappings of office, Stephen Miller is ultimately just a pathetic little man. One who really likes mayonnaise.
