President Donald Trump famously has a penchant for making up nicknames to mock his enemies.
There’s Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Lyin’ Ted Cruz, and Little Marco Rubio.
There’s now another to add to the list: “Weird Stephen.” The epithet has been applied to the deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, according to biographer Michael Wolff.
“There is an awareness that Stephen Miller is a problem,” Wolf said on The Daily Beast podcast. “And even Trump calls him ‘Weird Stephen.’ Because he is weird, by the way. I mean, you can’t spend a moment with him and not say, ‘Oh, something’s off here.’”
“He doesn’t make eye contact,” Wolff added. “And then he talks to you in this monotone voice, and it feels very revvy, you know, the engine of his voice keeps going, and you kind of step back.”
Wolff was discussing the possibility that Miller might lose his standing in Trumpworld if his efforts to deport large numbers of immigrants fail. Miller has called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest at least 3,000 migrants a day.
However, Trump at one point wavered in his stance on the removals. The Washington Post reported on Monday that the administration was reversing a planned pause on immigration raids on worksites connected to the agricultural, hotel, and restaurant industries. The Department of Homeland Security announced that raids would resume at such worksites during a Monday morning call with representatives from 30 ICE offices. Miller battled the initial pause on the raids.
Wolff noted that the president’s spectacular falling out with Elon Musk, the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is what can happen if someone within Trump’s orbit acquires too much power.
“Trump, who is lazy, lets other people be in charge, until they’re perceived as being in charge. Then they’re no longer in charge,” said Wolff.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s*** and has been proven to be a fraud,” a White House spokesperson told The Daily Beast in response to the claims regarding the nickname. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination—only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Top ICE officials had a heated discussion with Miller late last month as the Trump adviser berated them for falling short on the number of arrests.
“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” an official who spoke to those in the room during the meeting told the Washington Examiner.
“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” the official added, recounting what happened.
“Stephen Miller did not say many of the things you state,” ICE deputy assistant director of media affairs Laszlo Baksay told the Examiner.
Following the ouster of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Trump said he was considering Miller for the role. Secretary of State Marco Rubio currently serves as the national security adviser in an interim capacity.
"I think he sort of indirectly already has that job. Because he has a lot to say about a lot of things, he's a very valued person in the administration, Stephen," Trump said last month.
A former Trump adviser told NBC News last month that “Stephen is the president’s id. He has been for a while. It’s just now he has the leverage and power to fully effectuate it.”
Trump told NBC News that it would be a “downgrade” to appoint Miller to be national security adviser. “Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that,” said Trump.
“I don’t know that there is any policy area where his guidance is not sought,” the adviser added. “The president might not always go with exactly what he wants, but his input is always listened to.”
A top Trump adviser added to NBC News that “President Trump built much of his current political success by standing with the American people on immigration, and doing what others have been unwilling or unable to do — close the border.”
“There has been no bigger advocate of that in the history of the country than Stephen Miller,” the adviser said. “That, at its core, is why the president trusts him so much and relies on him to a degree that is matched by very few.”
