The worst possible man for the most important job

After the blue tsunami swept the country on Nov. 3, everybody wondered how President Trump would respond. Would he get the message and tone down his rhetoric? Would he agree to work with Democrats to lower prices? Would he end the war in Iran, stop mass deportations, rein in ICE, and end other hardline policies that voters had just so soundly rejected? In other words, in the next two years, would we see a “kinder, gentler” Trump?

We soon knew the answer. The very next day, Trump climbed onto the roof of the White House and flipped America the bird.

No, of course, he didn’t literally do that. But he did something just as bad: He named Stephen Miller the new White House chief of staff. He could not have made a worse decision.

Granted, the president can appoint anybody he wants as his own chief of staff. We’ve seen some great ones in our day, among whom I would include James Baker, Howard Baker , Mack McLarty , Leon Panetta , Andy Card, John Podesta and Ron Klain.

But Trump’s nomination of Miller is not only wrong-headed but also dangerous. I say this for two reasons: for what it says about Trump, and for what it says about Miller.

What it says about Trump is that he has totally lost touch with the American people. Of several factors contributing to the lopsided results of last week’s midterms, there’s no doubt that one of them was public disapproval of mass deportations conducted by ICE and Customs and Border Protection, under policies developed by Miller.

From January 2025 to July 2026, 643 ,000 persons had been deported from the U.S. — about 25,000 of them to countries to which they had no connection. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 457,000 of these had no criminal convictions. Of those deported from the interior of the U.S. during that period, 2 2 0,000 had lived here at least two years , and 57,000 for at least 10 years, without any criminal record.

Americans recoiled at that wholesale anti-immigration crusade. That’s not what we voted for, they said. And in red states and blue, they expressed their opposition. Fifty-eight percent of those who voted on Nov. 3 said Trump’s deportation crackdown had “gone too far.” They were led by Americans aged 18-29, who shifted their allegiance from 2024 to 2026, Republican to Democrat, by 33 percentage points . Disaffected Latinos moved from Republican to Democrat by 28 points .

Trump doesn’t get it. On the one hand, he told “60 Minutes” that maybe his deportation policy was “too tough.” On the other hand, he doubled down, giving the chief architect of that mass deportation policy the most important job in his administration.

Miller seems driven by a hatred of immigrants, telling Fox News in 2023: “ We are being conquered .” Starting in Trump’s first term, he championed a zero-tolerance strategy that separated children from parents apprehended at the border. He convinced Trump to try to end “birthright citizenship.” He advocated suspending habeas corpus, closing the border to asylum seekers, and cutting back on new green cards . Under his direction, the Department of Homeland Security ordered ICE to make 3,000 arrests a day in order to deport a million immigrants in the first year of Trump’s second term. He called nurse Alex Pretti, shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin.”

Which tells you all you need to know about Miller as chief of staff. No one could be more unqualified for the job. I once served as chief of staff to a California Republican state senator, and I can tell you that the position is a demanding one. You’re responsible for everyone your boss meets with, everywhere he goes, every piece of paper he sees, every decision he has to make or what decisions others can make for him. Perhaps, most importantly, you have to be honest enough to tell your boss when he’s dead wrong and when it’s time to change course.

Can you imagine Miller ever telling Trump he’s wrong about anything? No way. He’s a total sycophant. He’s more of a zealot than Trump is, as he proved again last Saturday at Mar-a-Lago. In his first speech since being named chief of staff, Miller pledged his “absolute loyalty” to Donald Trump and claimed that Trump had made the Republican Party “ stronger and more popular and more resilient than ever before .” This, after Republicans lost at least 45 seats in the House and seven seats in the Senate.

By naming Miller chief of staff, Trump has declared he’s not backing down on anything. It’s as if Nov. 3 never happened. God save the republic.