The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 30 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Stephen Miller suddenly seems to be in the crosshairs of a lot of leaks. In recent days, we’ve learned that Donald Trump has come to see mass deportations as a major political liability. Miller’s unhinged conduct internally may have also driven a top official into severe health problems. And Miller appears to be in a rage over lagging deportation numbers. So how is Miller’s overall project going right now? What’s coming next? We think the signs are mixed. It’s very plausible that Miller is not coming close to realizing his true designs. So we’re parsing through all this with one of our favorite Miller watchers, Chris Newman, counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Chris, good to have you on.
Chris Newman: It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Greg.
Sargent: So Politico had this really striking report which says that the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, has been hospitalized at least twice due to stress-related episodes. Turns out a big culprit is Stephen Miller yelling at Lyons on private conference calls. Politico calls this the latest example of continued infighting over immigration policy. Chris, it looks like there’s trouble in fascist paradise, doesn’t it?
Newman: Could you imagine having to do conference calls and Zooms with Stephen Miller on an ongoing basis and maintain your health and sanity? I couldn’t. And so it’s not surprising to hear that Lyons is buckling under the stress here.
Anyone who’s watched television and watched Stephen Miller yell into Sean Hannity’s ear can see how stressful and grating just the sound of his voice is. And now imagine having to endure back and forth with him on a daily basis. I guess that’s what we’re seeing.
Sargent: He’s really like those old newsreels of fascist leaders ranting at rallies, only he’s doing it right on Fox News. I absolutely agree that listening to him on a conference call berate the shit out of you like that would be as soul-destroying as anything you can imagine.
Newman: And to have to report to him. And one of the things that we know from the first term, of course—on a serious note—is how effective he is at reaching into the bureaucracies across agencies and gaining control and wielding whatever power he’s been irrigating in the White House. And so he really does tend to torment people who are these kind of mid-level technocrats across agencies, and it is clearly abusive. There’s no question.
I mean, people see that the guy is disturbed. Truly he’s disturbed. You can see people like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham almost wanting to say, calm down, take a breath. And for him to vent and exercise whatever frustrations—or whatever ailment he has—in a workplace is truly torturous to even think about. And he reaches across all different agencies of the federal government.
Sargent: Yes, his manipulation of the bureaucracy is a profound point that you raised there and I want to get back to it. It appears right now that a big source of Stephen Miller’s anger is deportations. Politico reports that Miller yelled at Lyons over low deportation numbers and other tactical matters, forcing Lyons to apologize for failing to meet Miller’s expectations.
Some people inside are disputing that—they’re saying that Miller is merely passionate, not abusive. But you know what, Chris, I’m going to put my money on abusive. Miller and Trump wanted to deport one million people a year, but by a number of different estimates, they clearly fell far short of that number, maybe hitting around 200,000 or 300,000 or thereabouts. Very plainly Miller is not happy about that. Chris, you’re on the front lines of these deportations. What’s your general sense of how close he’s coming to his targets?
Newman: Well, first, let me say that I’m with you. I tend to try to avoid all the palace intrigue drama, because one of the things that Trump has done is turned our government into a reality TV show. And so I would like to not have to pay attention to the latest rumors from within the White House. But there are ginormous material consequences to the way in which these lunatics wield their power. And I actually think that we do need to pay close attention. And I’ll share with you, by the way, a lesson where I kind of learned this.
People might not remember, but there’s a publication called The Washington Examiner. Last year they reported, as well, a kind of palace intrigue story of Stephen Miller yelling at the top of his lungs, saying the deportation numbers were too low—why are we not sending people to Home Depots to go after day laborers, who are the people that I represent and have represented for 20 years.
And so I was asked about my opinions about it. I was like, oh well, I don’t necessarily trust the reporting of this publication in any way—it’s gossip from inside the walls of the palace. And then shortly thereafter, masked men were deployed all around the country to terrorize day laborers at Home Depots. And this type of reporting had a real impact. And so, you know, we do need to pay attention to it, and I’m not going to allow false hope to set in.
But the fact that there’s this kind of leaking going both ways, and a kind of crack in a sense—I hope that’s a good thing. But you could also imagine it cutting the other way. You could also imagine Stephen Miller lashing out in bizarre, maniacal ways. But it is something we have to pay attention to. The man clearly has an agenda that he’s pursuing, and we have to be attentive to it.
Sargent: Well, look, I think you’re absolutely right that there are cracks showing. There’s actually other evidence of this that I want to get to. The thing about these leaks is that a lot of people internally now have their knives out for Miller. The Wall Street Journal had a major piece the other day that really threw Miller under the bus. It reported that Trump is privately telling advisors that he wants a new approach on immigration—he wants people to talk more about going after bad guys and not to use the words “mass deportations.”
Chris, tellingly, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles now sees the deportations as a liability in the midterms. Now, I want to acknowledge up front that Trump’s feints of a pivot are often bullshit, but this time it’s clear that they’ve concluded that Miller’s agenda has become a serious political problem for them. Miller has always believed his fascism would be very popular. So it’s noteworthy that a lot of insiders are letting the world know—and trying to let Trump know—that this is a catastrophe for them. What do you make of that?
Newman: I like it because it represents a departure from where things have been in the past. My belief is that Trump himself doesn’t give a shit one way or the other about immigration. He never did. He kind of recognized during a kind of call-and-response during the 2016 campaign that the “build the wall” stuff was useful. And I think he just as easily could have gone the other way if saying “pass the DREAM Act” got a call-and-response—he could have gone that way.
But he employed Stephen Miller and an accommodation was made, because Trump continued to kind of gain politically by his scapegoating and demagoguery and his effective pulling of the levers and dismantling of protections within the federal government. And so as long as Trump was in some ways benefiting—or believed to be benefiting—Stephen Miller was kind of given the ability to do whatever he wanted in terms of his deranged agenda.
And I think now the signs that that accommodation no longer works is potentially hopeful, because my sense is if Stephen Miller is ejected from the White House, I really do think anything is possible—in part because I think Trump is, in fact, so crazy. I think he is crazy enough to spin in any direction. And I think that the most destructive single individual in the Trump administration orbit over the last 10 years has been Miller. And if he leaves, I think that would be a good thing.
I mean, in essence—and I know I’m going on here—but in essence, I think the key question that we don’t know the answer to is: is Stephen Miller a host of The Apprentice or is he a guest on The Apprentice? Because if he’s a host, we’re stuck with him for three more years. But if he’s a guest and he gets fired and kicked off the island or whatever, who knows what comes next?
Sargent: Yeah, I think that is a reasonable way to think about the situation. Donald Trump absolutely does believe in all the white nationalist horseshit. He believes in the Western civilizational stuff. But his commitment to that stuff is kind of skin-deep. And I think that’s the real essence of this.
He likes to talk about shithole countries and abuse Ilhan Omar to the degree that he can kind of get his racist rocks off in public and shit on other people who he hates. But he doesn’t have the profound ideological commitment to this that Miller does. And so one has to at least hope that the Susie Wileses of the world are able to get it through his damn head that this is just a disaster for them.
Newman: There’s no question that at a given point, Trump—or the people around him, or certainly any free-thinking Republicans in the Senate, to the extent that there are any—are going to want to hit a reset button. And I do think that in some sense there’s a huge conundrum, because the reset button now on the war in Iran is beyond their control—it’s not like they can just end that. But they could potentially eject Miller from the office.
Now, I’m not saying that they will or won’t do that, but I am saying for sure that is the thing that we should all be cheering for and paying attention to. And maybe there might even be interest alignment, because things get so bad that Trump says, hey, I’ve got to make a big change here. Well, the biggest possible change in terms of domestic policy would be firing Stephen Miller.
Sargent: I agree 100 percent. And by the way, Trump hit a milestone on this in terms of unpopularity. G. Elliott Morris’s new poll for his Substack, Strength in Numbers, finds that with Americans nationally, Trump is now underwater by a couple of points on border security.
We need to make a critical distinction here. Trump has been underwater badly on the immigration issue broadly for much of the last year, but he’s always remained positive on border security as distinct from immigration more generally. Now that’s changed as well. That means every last bit of his advantage on this issue is just gone. Stephen Miller single-handedly pissed it all away.
Newman: Stephen Miller is trying to turn every street corner, every location in the country, into a border zone. And the country doesn’t like that. People might be willing to stop and wait in line for four hours when crossing back from Tijuana into San Diego. But no one wants to be pulled off of a bus and have to prove their immigration status. And in essence, what Miller has done is—through his kind of concocted dystopian fiction that they lie to the American public about, and perhaps lie to themselves about—that immigrants are all criminals and so forth. Well, the logical extension of that is that now your elementary school in your neighborhood is part of the border. And I think people are now seeing what that vision looks like in real life, and no one likes it.
Sargent: Let’s step back for a sec. As of now, MAGA and the Republican Party are in chaos over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Senate Democrats stayed united and forced Republicans to agree to fund other functions of DHS without anything for ICE. Democrats wanted reforms and restrictions and they stayed together.
But now House Republicans have rejected the funding that Senate Republicans passed—House Republicans want to fund all of DHS, ICE included. Chris, I think it’s a key tell in a global sense that Democrats are now united on their approach to DHS and ICE while Republicans are divided over it and fracturing. What’s your take on what’s happening?
Newman: It’s confusing in part because I can’t remember the last time Democrats have enjoyed a legislative victory on immigration—period. To the extent that Democrats are uniting, or to the extent that they are exercising power and turning the tide, it’s power that’s being given to them from people on the streets. And it started right in my hometown of Los Angeles, went to Chicago, went to Minneapolis. And there is a power that is being generated by people going out, helping one another, taking back democracy from the bottom up, from the outside in.
I’m not going to look into Chuck Schumer’s soul in terms of how he’s doing his maneuvers, but he’s been given power by people on the streets. And I think there’s an expectation that he use it. And I think it’s important that we continue to raise expectations on people like Schumer and Jeffries in particular.
Sargent: I think that’s a really important point. And in fact, that brings me to the final question here. If you look at the current situation, big picture, and you squint—you can see a way that Miller might be able to get a whole lot more deportations in the next year. He seems to be securing a whole new system of prison camps, enormous warehouses, which would allow him to massively increase the numbers in detention. He’s still got huge amounts of money available to him and he’ll probably keep staffing up ICE. But the flip side is that the level of public resistance they’ve run into is truly formidable.
You’ve got Democrats becoming aware, as you so aptly put it, that the people are giving them power against Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. And you know what? On some level, Trump is not happy with Miller’s program—I think that’s pretty obvious by now, by all these leaks. And so it’s a little hard to tell which way this is going to go. I can see it continuing to go south for them. What’s your overall take?
Newman: As long as people keep demonstrating, keep their cameras on, and reveal all the terrible things that ICE is doing, I think things will continue to go our way. Because we can speculate all we want about the palace intrigue, but the presence of Miller puts Trump in a kind of inexorable dilemma when it comes to deportations. They want a huge total number of deportations—mass deportations, right? But they also want to be able to say that they are prioritizing getting the so-called worst of the worst. They cannot do both of those things at the same time.
And in fact, in trying to do both of those things, ironically, they’re turning the country against mass deportations. Certainly the numbers are down from the Republican convention, when people were wearing signs. And also, just importantly, they’re undermining the ability to actually have a functioning law enforcement system that does in fact prioritize public safety. And I can tell you in my own life—I mean, there are people that I know in law enforcement that maybe initially were even Trump voters that are saying, hey, you know what? These knuckleheads at ICE are giving all of us a bad name.
And so the people that actually are charged with public safety—police, sheriffs around the country—and people who are not necessarily totally committed to an ideological project, but are more committed to kind of just getting through every day and keeping their community safe, are starting themselves to see how ICE is in conflict. The expansion of ICE is literally in conflict with the goal of community safety.
And so I think the one person who most personifies that inexorable dilemma—or contradiction, or whatever you want to call it—for Trump is Stephen Miller. And there are different ways in which it could maybe arrive at Trump’s kind of addled mind: whether it’s the political pressure, whether it’s another shooting, whether it’s another atrocity, or whether it’s just people being annoyed by ICE agents at O’Hare Airport. At a given point, Trump is going to say the guy who got me into this mess was Stephen Miller.
Sargent: Chris Newman, that is really brilliantly put. I’ve said this before on the show and I’ll say it again—for Stephen Miller, he has to prioritize removing the non-criminals over going after the criminals, because it’s the only way to get the numbers he needs to do the ethnic re-engineering of the country that he so badly craves. And that works against Donald Trump. That is the basic essence of this that you captured so well. Chris Newman, awesome to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Newman: Thanks so much.
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