How Stephen Miller's Rise Explains the Trump White House
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t’s not an easy gig to be the face of one of the first major controversies of Donald Trump’s presidency. But after Stephen Miller played a key role in drafting and rolling out Trump’s immigration executive order that unleashed global chaos last weekend, he found himself with a degree of public prominence that is unusual for someone in a policy role.
It’s not the first moment in the spotlight for Miller, one of the top policy advisers in the White House. During the campaign, the 31-year-old often gave the warm-up speech for Trump at rallies. But the controversy surrounding Miller highlights the unusual degree to which the Trump White House is structured around competing ideologies, producing the infighting that has always characterized Trump’s milieu.
Miller, along with chief strategist Steve Bannon, are the key figures of what could be called the Breitbart wing, one ideological grouping within the White House; the other, the Washington wing, is represented by chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer, both longtime Republican hands and experienced political insiders. Miller’s public profile, especially in the wake of the tumult over the travel ban he helped engineer, puts a target on his back—but also confirms how influential he has become in the early days of the Trump administration.
The immigration ban itself shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It at the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon) were left in the dark, not being informed until Trump was signing the order, which led to mass chaos and protests at airports around the country. As with any crisis originating in Washington, the search for a scapegoat began early, and it quickly targeted Miller.
