Why is Stephen Miller so divisive?

One of the most striking things about Trump 2: The Trumpening is how few characters are still on board from the Donald’s first term. Other than the President himself, it’s almost a completely different cast. Even the First Lady only rarely appears, as though she’s contractually obliged as a guest star for the occasional episode.

But there’s one very important exception: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. And while Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicts millions of Americans, Miller Derangement Syndrome is, as they used to say during Covid, a comorbidity.

MDS may have reached its peak earlier this month when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to Miller as a “clown.” “I’ve never seen that guy in real life,” she said in an intimate Instagram Live video for her followers, “but he looks like he’s like 4’10”. And he looks like he is angry about the fact that he’s 4’10”. And he looks like he is so mad that he is 4’10” that he has taken that anger out on any other population possible.”

The only problem with the insult is that Miller is, in fact, 5’10”, the average height for an American man. Appearing with Laura Ingraham on Fox News that week, Miller called AOC a “walking nightmare” whose eyes and brain “don’t work.” AOC had to go back on to Instagram Live to say she didn’t believe in “body-shaming.” “I want to express my love for the short king community,” she said. “I am talking about how big or small someone is on the inside.”

‘We are the storm,’ Miller said during Kirk’s memorial – and that storm is playing out as we watch

Whatever his size, it’s no stretch to say that, other than Trump himself, Miller is the most important figure steering American politics today. You can trace many of the administration’s key priorities – a closed border, hardline illegal immigration enforcement, an unbending support for Israel and the utter dismantling and humiliation of the Obama-era woke social order – to Miller and his ideas. He’s divisive, dogged and nearly omnipresent. Appearing in October on the final episode of the WTF podcast with Marc Maron, which late in its existence turned into a lodestar for the permanently traumatized liberal establishment, Barack Obama excoriated American institutions for “bending the knee” to Miller’s policies. “We’re not going to be bullied into saying that we can only hire people or promote people based on some criteria that’s been cooked up by Steve Miller,” he said. This, coming from a man who Miller referred to as “one of the worst presidents, if not the worst president, in US history,” felt extremely personal.

But what exactly is this ideology that has Democrats shrieking in terror? Miller doesn’t like illegal immigration or DEI policies in the workplace or academia, but these days, that places him smack in the American mainstream. He’s certainly not a “white nationalist,” as many of his detractors claim: observant Jews tend to shy away from white nationalism as a rule.

Miller grew up well-to-do in Santa Monica, California. His parents were conservatives, but they lived in one of the most liberal enclaves in America, which presented the illusion to him that he was a permanently oppressed underdog. As a high-school student, Miller called in to the conservative Larry Elder Show and brought Elder and conservative writer David Horowitz to speak at his school. Miller railed against fellow students and speakers who spoke Spanish and waged a successful campaign to get his school to institute a daily recital of the pledge of allegiance.

At Duke University, Miller wrote a column for the conservative newspaper called “Miller Time” and introduced himself to his fellow students by saying “I’m from Santa Monica, California – and I like guns.” In many ways, he resembles the late Charlie Kirk, though he lacks Kirk’s easygoing charm and charisma. Both were white millennial men who came of age in Obama’s America, were shocked by the absence of patriotism, religion, and traditional values and brought about a change in that culture by sheer force of will.

Miller’s speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial was one of the most divisive (to liberals) and welcome (to conservatives) pieces of rhetoric in recent memory. “To our enemies,” he said, “you have nothing to give, you have nothing to offer, you have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty, we have light, we have goodness, we have determination, we have vision, we have strength. We built the world that we inhabit now.” It was the rhetoric of an angry man grieving the loss of his friend, and of someone who was determined to press forward.

Speaking on Kirk’s podcast with guest host and Vice-President J.D. Vance the week after Kirk’s assassination, Miller said he was going to use all his power to dismantle nongovernmental organizations that he says created the climate that led to Kirk’s murder. “The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging that is designed to trigger [or] incite violence and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence,” Miller explained. “It is a vast domestic terror.”

He’s certainly not wrong about that. The fact is that every single one of Miller’s policy priorities have come to fruition since January. From media to academia to entertainment, the liberal establishment is on the defensive, with a diminishing toolset with which to battle Miller’s tactics. The ongoing street fights over ICE, the attempts to root out antifa, even the rhetoric about restoring religion to American life, are thoroughly Miller’s doing, and the administration isn’t backing down. “We are the storm,” Miller said during Kirk’s memorial – and that storm is playing out as we watch. This is Trump’s America, and the Short King’s world. Good luck to anyone who tries to get in his way.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.