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On Monday, Stephen Miller did an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. If Karl Rove was George W. Bush’s brain, Miller is Trump’s, well, Miller is the train conductor; he’s the guy who tells us where Trump is headed next.
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Even as there was still an effort to make out the attack on Venezuela to be some sort of law enforcement operation to arrest a couple of high value defendants, Miller made clear that it was far more, swiping aside the suggestion that Venezuela’s Vice President was running the country.
“We are in charge,” Miller told Tapper, “because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country during this transition period.”
Trump seemed to confirm that today, saying we would be involved in running Venezuela for years. The President said, “We will rebuild it in a very profitable way. We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.” Miller’s version was more to the point: Venezuela now needs Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s permission to continue to exist.
If you want to know where we’re headed, listen to what Stephen Miller says and understand what his priorities are.
Almost no one thought Donald Trump’s meandering comments about buying Greenland two Christmases ago were serious. The issue hasn’t been on the front burner. But, in what looks like a calculated strategy designed to put that country and Trump’s desire to take it over back on the public agenda, Miller’s wife tweeted about it, on the heels of the strike on Venezuela.
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When Tapper asked him what his wife’s tweet meant, Miller said the “formal position” of the administration was that Greenland “should be part of the United States.” When Tapper asked if military action to seize the country was a possibility, Miller responded that it wouldn’t be military action against Greenland and continued, “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO, for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States.”
Then Miller said, “And so that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country. That's a process we're going to have as a as a community of nations.” When Tapper pushed him on whether the U.S. might take military action Miller said, “Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”
Switching back, Tapper asked Miller if there should be an election in Venezuela. As previously, he didn’t get a direct response. “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We're a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries, but not to us, to hoard weapons from our adversaries, to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States rather than on behalf of the United States.”
When Tapper interjected that sovereign nations should be able to do as they please, Miller’s response was stark. “The Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine is all about securing the national interests of America.”
He’s pompous. He’s a lot of other things. But his ideas have informed where Trump is headed ever since he abandoned his soon-to-be disgraced and fired patron Jeff Sessions, and hitched himself to Trump during his 2016 campaign. Miller brought the same anti-immigrant fervor to Trump that he had supported during his time with Sessions. It’s that sad fear of people who are different that has brought us to a moment where the sight of ICE agents marching down American streets is as much a threat to American citizens as it is to people here without legal immigration status. Trump has always been transactional in his relationships, casting off people who no longer suit him. But Miller has had staying power and his priorities have currency.
His vision of the future is unabashedly that of a strongman. “The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology.”
“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,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Listen to Stephen Miller, because he signals where Trump is headed. It’s all about power, U.S. power. Donald Trump’s power and Stephen Miller’s power.
TAPPER: “But you invaded the country. We went into the country and we seized the leader of Venezuela.”
MILLER: “Damn straight we did.”
Nobody elected Stephen Miller. But Steve Bannon, who is a Miller ally, describes him as Trump’s “prime minister,” someone who is a player for this administration on all of the issues that are most important to him, including immigration and border security, national security, foreign policy, trade, military action, and policing. Miller fancies himself as a polymath, an expert in all things, but it’s far less likely that it’s that which keeps him in Trump’s good graces than it is the one quality Trump values above all else: loyalty. Miller is always in step with Trump, even when he’s explaining what he needs, and above all, he supports Trump’s vision of a muscular presidency with far more power than anything the Founding Fathers envisioned, anything that’s healthy for a democracy.
Tonight, Katie Miller is back on Twitter, objected to ChatGPT’s assessment that ICE is responsible for the shooting death of Renee Good as “dangerously woke.”
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Meanwhile, Miller tweeted, “The Democrat Party has spent months inciting insurrectionist violence against ICE,” using a photo from the September sniper shooting that took the lives of three people being detained by ICE at a facility in Dallas. The shooter, who took his own life, supposedly left “anti-ICE messages on shell casings, although evidence of his motive has never been clarified and there was no suggestion he was an anti-ICE activist. The FBI concluded he’d acted alone.
There is a lot wrapped up in the claim that Democrats are “inciting insurrectionist violence against ICE” even as there are reports, beyond the unnecessary, horrific death of Renee Good, of unlawful abuse of American citizens, some of whom have been detained, and immigrants alike. If you want to know what issues Donald Trump is being exposed to and how he’s being steered toward what he’ll do next, keep your eye on Miller.
Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse. There is a lot to pay attention to right now. Doing our job as citizens is more important than ever. I appreciate having this chance to be part of a community of people who care about the future and believe in staying informed. It’s your support and subscriptions that make the newsletter possible.
We’re in this together,
Joyce