On Friday, President Trump announced that Miller, 41, will replace Susie Wiles, the current chief of staff, on Monday. Wiles is a comparatively moderate Republican, her successor a tough ideologue. He praises the Iran war, promotes mass deportations and demonizes everything that seems left-wing to him. His rise is seen as a worrying reaction by the US president to the election debacle.
Large parts of the country have turned away from MAGA extremism and ensured a roaring victory for the Democrats in the midterms. On election night, Trump surprisingly acknowledged the result and promised, on the one hand, that he would work with the Democrats. On the other hand, the head of state threatened to veto any laws. Now he appears to be moving even further to the right, even though the electorate has just moved in the other direction.
President Trump has learned nothing from election day, said Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democratic group in the US Senate. He “couldn’t have made a worse choice” than Miller, Schumer writes on Platform Miller is responsible for “the most barbaric and inhumane policies of this administration.” His colleague Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives and will soon become the first African-American speaker of the House, calls Miller “a dangerous xenophobe and ruthless extremist with American blood on his hands.”
Trump, on the other hand, reported in a brief statement on his Truth Social network that Miller was “one of my most trusted advisors.” Susie Wiles will now move to the Trump Political Operation, which is his relatively insignificant campaign team. He thanked her, she did a great job. She was the first woman to hold this position. Now, after Trump's spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Justice Secretary Pam Bondi, she too is going.
The Chief of Staff is a kind of CEO of the American head of state, the influence of the Chief of Staff - or most recently the Chief of Staff - can hardly be overestimated. It is one of the most important offices in the nation. At the same time, the duration of the appointment depends very much on the mood of the respective boss. In his first term as president from 2017 to 2021, Trump wore out four chiefs of staff. Susie Wiles, 69 years old, held up comparatively well. She lasted almost half of that second term.
Wiles began her career with Ronald Reagan and later worked with George W. Bush. Her era with Trump began in 2016 when she supported his campaign in Florida. After his supporters stormed the Capitol in 2021 and the subsequent charges, when some confidants also distanced themselves from Trump, Wiles organized his comeback. The MAGA Republican appointed her chief of staff in 2025.
Susie Wiles was against the merciless treatment of immigrants that Stephen Miller encouraged
She was loyal, Trump remained loyal to her, at least until the end. She continued even after she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in March and declared herself cancer-free in September. As a rule, Wiles stayed in the background, but it seemed as if she could handle her egomaniacal and unpredictable boss.
She briefly caused a stir when a long portrait of her appeared in Vanity Fair in December 2025. Wiles had been giving one of her rare interviews to the magazine for months. In the text she recognizes that Trump, a teetotaler, has “the personality of an alcoholic.” She said that Elon Musk was a “confessed ketamine user.”
Maybe the trust was already crumbling back then. Above all, Susie Wiles was against Trump's Iran war and against the merciless treatment of immigrants, which was largely fueled by Stephen Miller. In October, Trump denied rumors that he would fire her and said he “couldn’t be happier with Susie.” Then came election night, for which he now apparently blames her too.
In addition to the high price of gas, Trump initially blamed some Republican candidates for the defeat - but not himself or the government. At first he seemed suspiciously calm, but this maneuver now gives rise to fears of the worst. Trump replaces a thoughtful strategist with a notorious fanatic. Miller is “a true patriot and fighter for America First,” tweeted the similarly fanatical Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose days in the Pentagon could be numbered.
Miller was his official adviser during Trump's first presidency and has been at his side for a decade. “Stephen has been there from the beginning,” Trump said Friday. Miller is "a driving force behind the administration's significant successes," writes the White House, "such as reducing violent crime to historic lows, securing the border on an unprecedented scale, and detecting and combating fraud on a large scale."
The New York Times listed what this means. Miller's record includes, among other things, his contribution to the separation of migrant families at the US border in 2017, the entry ban for people from predominantly Muslim countries in 2017 and the attempt to silence Trump's critics. He also supported the end of US refugee programs, pressure on universities or the sending of soldiers to American cities such as Washington and Los Angeles.
Entry bans, ICE checks, abolition of US birth rights – Miller supports all of these
Miller played a key role in ensuring that the masked raiding parties of the ICE immigration authorities moved through Chicago and Minneapolis. Horror increased when officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti. But Miller claimed Pretti was a "domestic terrorist" and a "potential assassin" even though he was holding a cellphone, the gun on his belt was immediately removed. He accused Somali-Americans in Minnesota of fraud.
Miller also advocated for the abolition of birthright, automatic U.S. citizenship for children born in the country. In rejecting the proposal, the Supreme Court called the ruling "one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions" in the history of the Supreme Court. He is in favor of purging the US administration of officials who are not loyal to Trump. He found the attacks on suspected small-time dealers, which violated international law and left more than two hundred and forty dead off the coast of South America, okay.
For him, Trump is “the most influential political leader in American history” who “single-handedly saved America” from those who wanted to “destroy” it. He now wrote on
To CNN host Jake Tapper, Miller once said this: "We live in a world where you can talk all you want about international pleasantries and the like. But we live in a world - the real world, Jake - that is ruled by strength, by violence, by power. Those are the iron laws of the world, since the beginning of time." This is Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's new chief of staff in the White House, one of the most powerful men in America.
