First replacement in the White House after the disastrous midterm elections for the Republican Party. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced this Friday the appointment of one of his most ruthless advisors on immigration, Stephen Miller, as his new chief of staff. Miller replaces Susie Wiles, in what seems to indicate a shift by the president towards even harder positions in the new stage of his mandate.
Miller, Trump's domestic policy advisor, Wiles' “number two” and one of the men who has always been on the president's side since Trump's first election campaign, maintains extremely tough positions on the immigration issue, to the point that the president had even joked that they were too radical even for him.
Wiles, who is credited with maintaining the operation of the White House as a highly disciplined operation over the last year and a half, had been the subject of controversy in recent weeks, after it came to light that her daughter Katie works for an American lobbying firm that signed a $35,000-a-month contract in February to represent the Republika Srpska, a Serb-majority territorial entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Two other senior officials of the Trump campaign who had collaborated with Susie Wiles, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina at the beginning of October to help last Sunday in the victory of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD, by its acronym in Serbian), led by the pro-Russian Milorad Dodik. The episode opened a political storm among Republicans in the United States just four weeks before the elections. The separatist Dodik is the strongman of the Republika Srpska.
The announcement of the replacement occurred three days after voters dealt a resounding slap to the Republicans in the elections that have given the Democratic opposition its largest majority in decades in Congress. Trump himself made it known through his favorite media, his social network Truth.
"I am pleased to announce that Mr. Stephen Miller, current Deputy Chief of Staff of the Trump Administration and one of my most trusted advisors, will assume the role of Chief of Staff effective Monday, November 9, 2026. Susie Wiles, who has done an exceptional job, will become part of Trump's Political Operations team. I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff; she has done a great job," the president wrote.
Barely 40 years old, Miller has managed to earn the trust of the American president over a decade of collaboration. He is his leading ideologue, his domestic policy advisor and the author of some of his toughest initiatives, including his strategy of mass deportations at all costs against immigration. And its hand increasingly extends also to foreign policy.
His ultra-nationalist ideas fit like a glove with Trump's vision of the world, in which the United States dictates the terms through transaction or coercion - the first for friendly countries, the second for the most fractious governments -, while the vital space of other great powers is respected and the rest of the countries become mere vassals that abide by the guidelines without the right to express their opinion.
Wiles' departure seems related to that resounding American rejection of Trumpism. The former Chief of Staff presented her resignation to the president on Thursday night, according to a senior White House official. “Today is my last day as White House Chief of Staff,” the former advisor wrote on the social network X. “Serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of my life. I am so proud to have been a part of what we have accomplished together: from securing our border and lowering taxes, to strengthening our economy and putting America first. More than anything, I am grateful for the extraordinary people I have had the privilege of working with. Although my role may change, my commitment to the president and the mission never will.
Miller is one of the characters in the Trump Administration most detested by Democratic legislators for his extremely harsh positions. After the results of Tuesday's elections were announced, and the dimensions of the rejection of his policies became clear, the US president had pointed out the possibility of collaborating with the new Democratic legislature. But the appointment of the radical adviser may set the stage for a much more contentious relationship.
“We live in a world in which we can talk all we want about international niceties and so on, but we live in a world, the real world, that is governed by force, governed by harshness, governed by power,” he maintained in January in an interview for CNN in which he defended that the United States could take over Greenland because “we are a superpower.” “These are the iron rules of the world since the beginning of time,” he stressed. The Republican Administration ended up reaching an agreement with the autonomous territory under Danish sovereignty and with Copenhagen to increase its presence on the island, but without controlling or purchasing it, as Trump had demanded in the first months of his mandate.
This vision of Miller permeates Trump's new foreign policy outlined in the National Security Strategy of last December, in which the White House declares the American continent its top priority. It also establishes Miller's great phobias as the main international risks faced by immigration and drug trafficking.
