Donald Trump’s appointment of Stephen Miller as his consigliere is a declaration of war.
It certainly signals a MAGA winter of discontent, but the ramifications of Miller’s promotion will be felt for the next two years and beyond.
By choosing possibly the most hated man in America as his White House chief of staff on Friday, Trump was sending a message.
The president is going to the mattresses and ensuring the Democratic Party and the American people know he is up for the fight.
He knows the Democrats are coming for him and his henchmen with subpoenas and impeachments. Now they know he isn’t going to lie down.
Not only is Miller’s rise a middle finger to the Hispanic voters who deserted Trump over the brutality of the ICE immigration policies he pioneered, but it also marks a change in tone.
The political discourse will, if anything, get darker. It will certainly get nastier.
Miller is an ideologue who only sees ideas through one lens. His.
And through time served—he was part of the president’s first-term team and has grown in power this time around—and his MAGA fanaticism, many of those ideas have now been taken up by Trump.
It has been the nationalistic zeal with which he has pushed deportations and ICE arrests that has drawn comparisons with the Nazis.
For a moment in the early hours of Wednesday, it seemed Donald Trump had settled on being the gracious loser in the immediate aftermath of his election humiliation. He even congratulated his opponents for a battle well fought.
He must have felt every one of his 80 years watching in the East Room as the results went from bad to worse.
But, as he keeps telling everyone, it was no fluke that he had a hit show on network TV with The Apprentice. He knows how to keep an audience on their toes and deliver a cliffhanger that will keep people interested.
With everybody waiting for Pete Hegseth to be killed off, he takes out Susie Wiles’ legs instead. And then he puts the villain front and center in the administration.
Acquaintances who have known Trump over the years believe he relishes the times his back is against the wall most of all.
He would shout at his legal staff during his legal travails before returning to the presidency, just as he yelled at his political team after Tuesday’s election.
At 80, the anger feeds him. He has never been the wise old owl learning from his mistakes and growing stronger and better as a result.
He is the scorpion, and it is in his nature to sting.
By appointing Stephen Miller as his lieutenant in the White House, Trump is merely reverting to type.
And the country will be left to pick up the pieces.
