My Coffee With Stephen Miller

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller waiting to give a television interview outside the White House on September 5. Francis Chung/AP

I’m still on the road, as the year winds down. So we’re again reaching into the Our Land archives. ’Tis the season for news outlets to sum up the past 12 months and offer jaunty year-end features. The New York Times on Sunday presented us its summation of Donald Trump’s return to the White House under the positive-sounding headline, “Trump Promised Radical Change in His Second Term. Here’s What He’s Done So Far.” It was a reasonable accounting but left out important facts and characterizations. The piece noted that Trump and Elon Musk “gutted” the U.S. Agency for International Development but did not report that this move has led to the estimated deaths of 231,000 adults and 480,000 children overseas. It stated Trump had “driven illegal crossings at the border to record lows” and “ramped up his deportation campaign” without describing the brutality and secret-police tactics of this crusade. There was much neutral language in the Times’ story—which benefits an autocrat.

Unmentioned in the article were many of Trump’s top aides who have helped him steer the nation toward authoritarianism—including Stephen Miller. His hand is often seen in the worst of Trump’s moves, such as the ICE raids and Trump’s dictatorial efforts to demonize his critics and political foes as “the enemy within.” A few years ago, before Stephen Miller was Stephen Miller, I had an interesting encounter with him. Here’s my account of that event, which I first shared earlier this year.

About a dozen or so years ago, a staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ultraconservative Republican from Alabama, reached out to me and asked if we could meet. I don’t hear from too many GOP aides on Capitol Hill, so I was game. We rendezvoused at a coffee shop around the corner from my office. The aide was eager to pitch me an idea. Shouldn’t liberals who care about American workers make common cause with immigration restrictionists? Fewer immigrants, he contended, would mean more jobs available for American citizens. And if these were the sort of jobs employers had trouble hiring for, those owners would then have to pay workers more—and Americans would earn more. How could unions and liberals not support this?

He was quite earnest and a tad nerdy, and he discussed this notion with a missionary zeal. It was clear he was not having much success on the Hill connecting with Democrats or Republicans on this. He was an outsider and reminded me of those proud libertarians I had met in college who were certain they had figured everything out and didn’t understand why others didn’t embrace their logic-driven ideology. I told the fellow that I was hardly a representative for liberals or labor but that I would think about what he said. Nothing concrete came out of our conversation. I pinged the aide a few times with questions about in-the-news matters involving the Senate, and he replied, usually with information that was not that useful. What struck me most was that he was so sure he had found the path for America’s future and that he just needed to persuade the unenlightened (like me) to see it.

His name was Stephen Miller.

Years later, I was surprised to see him as a top commander in Trump’s MAGA army. Sessions, the first GOP senator to endorse Trump in the 2016 campaign, had brought him into the fold. Though Trump fired Sessions less than two years into his stint as attorney general, Miller remained in Trump’s inner circle, becoming a top enabler—perhaps the most important one—of Trump’s dangerous id and a power-hungry extremist guiding Trump’s crusade of nativism and march toward authoritarianism.

When I first met Miller, he did not seem like a likely propagandist for autocracy. I guess you never know.

These days, Miller, as Trump’s mini-me, has been paving the way for Trump’s war on dissent—and that’s a literal war, with Trump deploying troops to cities to do battle with protesters (who tend to be peaceful) and to show Democrats that he’s a strongman who can exert military power to seize control of their cities and states.

In remarks and social media posts over the past few weeks, Miller has declared that Trump as president has unlimited power; that “left-wing terrorism” is rampant across the land; that Democrats support violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, back “domestic terrorists,” and are a “domestic extremist organization”; and that governors, mayors, and judges who oppose and block Trump’s deployments of troops to American cities are engaged in an “insurrection.” He claims there’s a war raging in America’s cities due to antifa, ICE protesters, and hordes of criminals; he’s obviously attempting to establish a predicate for Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and expanding his use of troops within the United States to solidify his rule.

Miller was a force behind Trump’s recent moves to designate antifa, a decentralized movement, as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which Trump had no authority to do, and to issue a National Security Presidential Memorandum that associates a variety of political views—“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”—with “violent and terroristic activities.” As the Brennan Center for Justice notes:

This breathtakingly broad list easily encompasses everyone from labor organizers, socialists, many libertarians, those who criticize Christianity, pro-immigration groups, anti-ICE protestors, and racial justice and transgender activists, to anyone who holds views that the administration considers to be “anti-American.” Under NSPM-7, the antifascist label can be attached to any of these types of people and groups and many more besides, giving the government maximum flexibility to pick and choose its targets.

As the center says, much of this memo “is squarely directed at speech and nonviolent action by organizations and individuals protected by the First Amendment.”

The Trump-Miller effort to delegitimize, if not criminalize, freedom of speech and protest has been embraced by Capitol Hill Republicans. This Saturday, there will again be No Kings marches and rallies across the nation opposing Trump. Millions could turn out for this event—in a continuation of the peaceful demonstrations that were held in June that drew an estimated 4 to 6 million participants. And this seems to scare Republicans.

On Friday, during a press briefing held by House Republican leaders, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the majority whip, exclaimed that the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party was “set to hold…a hate-America rally in DC.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) got his licks in, too. He said the protesters would be “the antifa crowd and the pro-Hamas crowd and the Marxists.”

The same day, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said, “This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. We'll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it."

On Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy chimed in, saying the No Kings rallies are “part of antifa, paid protesters.”

It looks as if the Republicans are running a disinformation campaign to smear the opposition. This Miller-like denigration of peaceful protest—commies! terrorists!—is deplorable fearmongering, which has become Miller’s specialty: depicting America as land wracked with left-wing violence and lawlessness. When millions gathered in June at over 2,100 No Kings rallies, there were no violent eruptions. But in Trump’s cult, Milleresque demagoguery is contagious, and conservatives who claim to hold the Constitution near and dear have no problem lying to denounce and undermine First Amendment–protected activity.  

It’s all part of Trump’s—and Miller’s—assault on constitutional rights and freedoms. Republicans, evidently worried about the pro-democracy protest this weekend, are trying to preemptively tar as extremists the citizens who gather to resist Trump and his assault on American democracy.

Miller, I’m sure, has learned a lot since he came knocking on my door, a lonely Senate aide seeking attention and across-the-aisle company. One lesson appears to be that hyperbole, lies, and demonization are essential tools for an authoritarian looking to crush democratic opposition and impose autocratic rule. But I doubt Miller has changed much. He’s still a zealot—but one who finally figured out how to transform his fanaticism into influence and power.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

This is one of the newsletter’s most popular features—judging from what my immediate family tells me—and one of my favorite editions this year awarded the prize to Bill O’Reilly:

The winner this week is an old-timer we don’t pay much attention to anymore: Bill O’Reilly. He truly went the extra mile in blaming the Biden administration for the Epstein affair. Watch the full video:

The judges unanimously agreed no further comment was necessary.

There were far too many accommodationists this year who accepted and bolstered Trump’s regime. Some of the worst have been the Big Tech barons, who have flocked to the White House and sucked up to Trump to protect their corporate profits. Here’s an edition of this irregular Our Land feature from September:

This installment comes courtesy of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who posted this video on X:

I expect such sucking-up from Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Tim Cook (Apple), Sam Altman (OpenAI), and the other Big Tech overlords. But Bill Gates praising Trump for his “incredible leadership”? What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t have no more Fs to give? Of all of them, Gates—the target of many noxious conspiracy theories spread by MAGA fabulists—ought to know better than to hobnob with and legitimize a wannabe autocrat who has waged a war on science, ripped up climate change efforts, and annihilated humanitarian relief programs.

At the suggestion of a reader who said she was looking for dollops of hope, I began Inspiration of the Week as another irregular feature. Here’s an installment from this past summer. Feel free to email me suggestions in the coming year.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the marvelous exhibit of Amy Sherald’s paintings at the Whitney Museum in New York City. She gained national prominence when her official portrait of Michelle Obama was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in 2018. I noted, “Her work contemplates and celebrate the everyday Black experience in American life. With her subjects often looking straight at the viewer dispassionately yet evincing a rich interior life, the paintings deliberately evoke an Edward Hopper–like quality...At a moment when Trump is mounting a cultural battle that aims to discredit and defund art and history that dares to examine race in America, the Whitney show feels rebellious.” I also pointed out that the show, which runs through August 10, was slated to move to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in September and added, “I hope that happens”—suggesting that in the Era of Trump that might not happen.

Indeed, it is not.

Sherald has withdrawn the show from the National Portrait Gallery after being told the museum was considering removing one of her paintings, which depicts a transgender Statue of Liberty, to avoid ticking off Trump and MAGA culture commissars. Her exhibition would have been the first by a Black contemporary artist at the Portrait Gallery. 

“I entered into this collaboration in good faith, believing that the institution shared a commitment to presenting work that reflects the full, complex truth of American life,” Sherald wrote in a letter to Lonnie Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian. “Unfortunately, it has become clear that the conditions no longer support the integrity of the work as conceived.’’ (Reportedly the Smithsonian had suggested adding a video to the exhibit that would show people’s different reaction to this particular painting—a move that could have challenged, if not undermined, Sherald’s intent.)

In a statement, Sherald said that this portrait “exists to hold space for someone whose humanity has been politicized and disregarded. I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship, especially when it targets vulnerable communities. At a time when transgender people are being legislated against, silenced, and endangered across our nation, silence is not an option. I stand by my work. I stand by my sitters. I stand by the truth that all people deserve to be seen—not only in life, but in art.”

Amy Sherald's “Trans Forming Liberty” (2024). (Photo: Kelvin Bulluck)