Trump fails to learn midterm lesson with Stephen Miller chief of staff pick

After that blue tsunami hit the Republicans in the midterms, you might expect a president to reassess, but President Trump’s lesson from all of this seems to be that it’s time to double down.

He chose to promote one of the people most closely associated with the agenda voters just rejected. On Friday, Trump announced that Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff.

Miller was already a powerful deputy chief of staff and a driving force behind the administration’s hard-line immigration agenda. Now he’ll have an even bigger platform.

Here’s Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed’s reaction on ABC’s “This Week”:

“He decides to hire the most broken man to continue to run the most dysfunctional White House we’ve seen. I don’t know what Stephen Miller has actually contributed to our culture, our society, in any real way, except to make us more angry and stoke the worst kind of fear and vitriol. To weaponize ICE in our streets to take American lives, the real question is, why appoint this man to White House chief of staff if you want to have a productive relationship with the Congress?”

This isn’t just Democratic criticism either. Indiana Republican Congressman Marlin Stutzman called Miller’s promotion a “horrible decision.” Just days earlier, Stutzman said Miller should be fired, arguing the administration’s highly publicized deportation tactics had become a political liability.

Don’t forget there was also specific evidence from a Minnesota attorney general’s survey showing measurable racial disparities in Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. Listen to how Miller responds when asked whether immigration enforcement targets people of color:

“Oh, what a dumb question. The illegal aliens who are here are taking jobs away from Blacks, they’re taking jobs away from whites, they’re taking jobs away from Latinos, they’re taking their health benefits away, they’re taking their school slots away, and of course in many cases they’re committing heinous crimes.”

He deflected, with lies. A study by The National Academies found immigration has very little long-term effect on native-born workers’ wages overall , and little evidence of significant effects on their overall employment. And KFF says undocumented immigrants are ineligible for federally funded Medicaid, Medicare and ACA marketplace coverage , with an extremely limited emergency-care exception.

If that’s not enough to show was he was a poor choice, Miller was a contributor to Project 2025 , the Heritage Foundation-backed blueprint for reshaping the federal government. Among its proposals: expanding presidential control over the executive branch, including the Justice Department, and challenging the independence of federal agencies. We’ve seen glimpses of the president testing the limits of his presidential power for the past two years.

Miller is also one of the geniuses behind the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean that he and President Trump declared constituted a foreign invasion without providing evidence to Congress.

An Associated Press investigation into some of these bombings identified nine men connected to boats destroyed by U.S. strikes. They found some were fishermen, laborers, drivers and other struggling locals with many residents of the area they were from saying most were not cartel leaders or “narco-terrorists.” They were a few of many that were killed without arrest, charges or a day in court.

Actually, the campaign has killed at least 243 people to date . Republican Sen. Rand Paul has called the strikes “extrajudicial killings.” Stephen Miller’s promotion is not a partisan concern; it is a question of whether he’s equipped to lead following the law and the limits of presidential power.

Introspection has never been Trump’s strong suit. But after voters delivered a clear rebuke, promoting Miller suggests the lesson inside the White House isn’t to listen or recalibrate. It’s to turn up the volume.

Lindsey Granger is a NewsNation contributor and co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising.” This column is an edited transcription of her on-air commentary.