President Donald Trump’s newly-appointed chief of staff, Stephen Miller, has been widely described as “paranoid” and fiercely determined to implement his goals. Now a new report reveals the extent to which he exerted his control over the White House even before receiving his new promotion — and it paints a picture that The Daily Beast characterized as “creepy.”
“Miles Taylor, the Homeland Security official who wrote as Anonymous for The New York Times in September 2018 saying he was part of a ‘quiet resistance’ under Trump 1.0, described how working with Miller required taking late-night phone calls and dealing with his surprise appearances during meetings,” reported The Daily Beast’s Julia Owned on Wednesday. Taylor described Miller as the kind of boss who offered “late-night phone calls every single weeknight to the point that your spouse starts asking you questions.”
Taylor also said that Miller is a “ferocious micromanager” who bores down to the smallest government offices to make his will known “because he knows that’s how you get things done in Washington.”
Taylor added, “That’s something that made Stephen very formidable and very effective, is that he understands the government bureaucracy and he is willing to jump down into meetings where they would never expect him.”
Speaking with AlterNet earlier in November, a clinical and forensic psychologist argued that Trump chose Miller to be his chief of staff as a way of demonstrating in an aggressive way his posture of defiance against the Democrats who won the House of Representatives and Senate in the 2026 midterm elections.
“But instead, he is going to double down, triple down, quadruple down,” Dr. Alan D. Blotcky, a clinical and forensic psychologist who wrote more than 40 articles for Salon, NY Daily News, and The Independent, told AlterNet. “He’s not gonna be conciliatory. He’s not gonna be someone who works with Democrats. He wants what he wants. He doesn’t want oversight. He doesn’t want accountability. He doesn’t want anybody issuing him subpoenas to look at his behavior. And so he is essentially arming up for a fight, for a huge fight over the next two years, because he knows that oversight and accountability are coming. He’s going to resist it with all his might. And so Stephen Miller, who is the strongest sycophant around, and also the architect of the failed immigration plan, is now gonna be chief of staff.”
He added, “So he’s getting ready for the fight. And I think the next two years are going to be messier and more toxic than the first two years.”