Is Stephen Miller Trump’s ‘Minister of Truth?’

Image by Getty Images

By Daniel J. Solomon February 28, 2017

Stephen Miller, President Trump’s controversial and enigmatic national policy director, has been gaining the new leader’s confidence, even as other aides fall out of favor or run into trouble representing their boss.

In a cover story for Bloomberg Businessweek, Joshua Green refers to Miller as the White House’s “minister for truth,” diving into his influence over the administration’s priorities and messaging. While some fault Miller for an off-putting mien (recently displayed when he made on the Sunday show), he’s apparently well-regarded by Trump, who admires his aide’s willingness to defend outlandish claims on issues like voter fraud and the media.

And perhaps as importantly, he inspires devotion from his boss Steve Bannon, the chief White House strategist who went on the record for the profile. “It’s just like any opposition party,” he said of the media’s supposed attacks on Miller. “They’ll try to take out some of the best young people in any organization. Stephen is a tough guy, I can tell you from the campaign. He’s used to being absolutely vilified.”

So far, it seems it’s Bannon and Miller’s White House, as the administration takes strong measures to enact its economic nationalist vision, whether it’s putting out new directives that encourage deportations to the Muslim ban to castigating the press as “the enemy of the American people.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO