Stephen Miller has been unleashed:
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller wants to make sure that outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is only the first of a string of senior officials headed out the door, as he is given more authority over immigration policy....
Miller's heightened influence within the West Wing has been aided by the President, who recently told aides in an Oval Office meeting that Miller was in charge of all immigration and border related issues in the White House, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
Trump administration officials say that Miller, who played key a role in Nielsen's ouster, wants the President to dismiss the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Lee Cissna, and the department's general counsel, John Mitnick. United States Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Alles, is also being removed from his position, multiple administration officials tell CNN.
Miller might be the most frightening Trump subordinate. But he could be stopped. Here's how.
Miller is skilled at remaining in the shadows. Over the past couple of years, he's done TV interviews and other public appearances when President Trump wanted him to, but he doesn't court the press. You don't read a lot of feature stories about Miller. In the early days of the administration, he was frequently paired with another Stephen, Steve Bannon -- they were both racists who wanted to make big changes. But Bannon loved to talk to reporters, telling them, in effect, that he was the brains of the outfit, and trash-talking people he shouldn't have trash-talked. He got canned. Miller kept his mouth shut and is still around.
If the press were to begin writing big stories about Miller, especially stories calling him "the real president of the United States" (which, at this moment, he seems to be), Trump would be mightily peeved. It would especially offend Trump if Miller were to show up on the cover of Time, or some other legacy magazine. (Are there any others that are on Trump's radar? New York magazine? The New York Times Magazine?) Trump would feel upstaged. He'd be furious. Miller would, at the very least, be moved to Trump's doghouse, if not to the dead-man-walking category that precedes all defenestrations in this White House.
Miller seems too shrewd to cooperate with writers seeking to do big feature stories. But they could be done without access, using a little ... what's the word for it? -- journalism. This would be a service to the country, because Miller is a dangerous person who should not be working for the U.S. government.
I know it's not the job of the press to motivate a fragile-egoed president to fire a sick, bigoted, megalomaniacal underling, but sometimes true patriotism demands more of us than is contained in our job descriptions. So come on, insider journalists. You know what to do.
Republished with permission from No More Mr. Nice Blog
