Stephen Miller: Portrait of Donald Trump’s ideologue-in-chief
During a recent interview with CNN host Jake Tapper, the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, laid out what appears to be the core of the new ideology driving US foreign policy: the notion that might is right. Or, as he put it: “We’re a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.”
Miller was referring to the Trump administration’s ambitions to take control of Greenland, if necessary by force. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” he told Tapper. “But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
The 40-year-old Californian is one of Trump’s most trustworthy advisers and also one of the longest serving, having joined Trump’s first campaign in January 2016. While the president’s first administration had a revolving door of different appointees, many of whom who barely lasted a year, Miller is one of a handful of advisers to serve in both Trump’s first and second terms.
The two reportedly have a close working relationship, meeting daily along with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to go through Trump’s diary and review the executive orders to be signed. Having started out as a speechwriter, Miller’s position has evolved to focus more on interpreting the president’s ideas and executing them as policy initiatives. He is also understood to be a key liaison point between the White House and Capitol Hill, where he briefs lawmakers on Trump’s plans.
ORIGINS OF AN EXTREMIST
Miller’s extreme ideas did not come out of nowhere. In contrast to the vice-president, J.D. Vance and secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose ideologies have evolved significantly to be in line with Trump’s agenda, Miller has had a long history of supporting radical America First style policies.
While in high school in Santa Monica, Miller is said to have complained about students having to pick up rubbish, saying janitorial staff should do it instead. As a 16-year-old he contributed an article to a local website, criticizing his fellow Hispanic students for a lack of language skills.
While at Duke University, where he studied political science, he contributed a number of articles to the college website, attacking multiculturalism and championing right-wing issues. He was also part of a group at Duke, Students For Academic Freedom, that criticized what they saw as political bias among faculty staff. These ideas would resurface in his attack on universities as a Trump administration official.
Moving to Washington, Miller first worked as an aide to then Republican representative Michele Bachmann before taking a job with Republican senator Jeff Sessions as press secretary. One of his main focuses was in developing critiques of immigration, collaborating with groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies.
This is where he developed the ideas that have formed the backbone of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies, including the now notorious family separation policy, by which children were often taken from their parents — who were subject to prosecution for attempting to cross the US southern border illegally. The policy was judged to be so harsh that the UN openly condemned it as cruel and unnecessary.
Immigration has been one of the main focuses of Miller’s work in Trump’s second term. He is understood to behind the decision to deploy immigration and customs enforcement agents en masse on the streets of US cities with power to detain and deport suspected illegal immigrants. Other radical policies bearing Miller’s hallmark are the plan to end the American policy of birthright citizenship, in contravention of the 14th amendment to the US constitution.
But then many of the policy ideas he espouses have brought Miller into conflict with American constitutional law. He has publicly declared that in some circumstances it should be permissible to suspend a person’s habeas corpus right to a trial before they can be imprisoned and he has questioned the power of the judiciary to hold the administration to account over executive decisions on matters such as deportations and due process.
PERSONALITY POLITICS
If relatively unknown during Trump’s first term, Miller’s profile has grown considerably in the first 12 months of the second Trump administration. A YouGov poll conducted in September 2025 found that 50% of respondents had heard of him and he had a popularity rating of 18%.
But if he is disliked and feared by many on Capitol Hill, as well as among the wider public, Miller has an ideological ally and staunch supporter in his wife Katie, who achieved instant fame on Jan. 3 after tweeting a map of Greenland with the US flag superimposed on it, accompanied by the word “SOON.”
Within hours the US president had voiced his intention to intervene in Greenland for reasons of national security and to secure access to its huge reserves of mineral resources.
Like her husband, Katie worked in the first Trump administration, at the department of homeland security. She once told a reporter that even the administration’s separation policy was not a problem for her, claiming: “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself, to try to make me more compassionate, but it didn’t work.”
She now runs The Katie Miller podcast, which she established as a “place for conservative women to gather online.” Among other things, it provides a regular and uncritical platform for administration officials.
But the Millers’ growing public profile could prove to be a double-edged sword for the Trump administration. Despite saying out loud what many on the far-right of the Republican party want to hear, their apparent extremism is increasingly a focus for Trump’s critics. California’s democrat governor Gavin Newsom — generally thought to be preparing for a presidential run in 2024, has taken to referring to Miller as Voldemort, the personification of evil in the Harry Potter novels.
All of which is unlikely to resonate well with the independent voters that the Republicans desperately need to win over if they are not to lose vital ground in November’s midterm elections.
THE CONVERSATION VIA REUTERS CONNECT
Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex.
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