Even some Republicans are blasting Trump’s decision to make Stephen Miller his chief of staff, calling the latter a ‘megalomanic’, a rigid ideologue dead set on increasing the numbers of deportations even if it hurts the support that Republicans had been able to raise among Hispanic voters.

Several Republican lawmakers are fuming over President Donald Trump’s elevation of Stephen Miller to be his chief of staff.
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And while voter analyses have shown that Trump’s war in Iran and tariffs played the biggest roles in turning people away from the GOP, his handling of illegal immigration served to alienate voters in key areas. That’s in no small part due to Hispanic and Latino voters turning their backs on Republicans in places like Texas that shifted massively toward Democrats in this election cycle.

“Because of his immigration positions, I just think we ruined a lot of our goodwill with Latino voters,” Stutzman said.

The second GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital that Miller ignored multiple warnings from House Republicans in the past, arguing that Trump’s immigration crackdown is what voters asked for.

“I’ve been in several group meetings where a lot of us have told him, ‘Your immigration enforcement policies are backfiring back home, our people are mad, our businesses are mad — even in deep red districts — and it is impacting not just the voters, but the donors, and everybody top to bottom,” that GOP lawmaker said. “But it looked to me like Stephen Miller was only after numbers … he would not listen to us.”
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“I think he’s greatly hurt the administration and cost us many seats on Tuesday,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Fox News Digital before news of Miller’s promotion broke. “He took an immigration policy that favored the president 2:1 in the public, over-reached and made it 2:1 unfavorable.”

“Many Republicans don’t like him,” Bacon added when asked about his promotion.

Mind you, this is Fox News that is saying this.

It is not surprising that Trump would do this. Even he, delusional as he is, must know that the election was a repudiation of him, his family, and almost everything he stands for. After the shellacking he and his party got in mid-terms, he is doing what frightened and insecure people do, circling the wagons and retreating even more into his comfort zone, surrounded by people whom he sees as unquestioningly loyal and will tell him what he wants to hear and will keep everyone in line. Miller will be expected to play the role of the character Malcolm Tucker played by Peter Capaldi in the British political comedy The Thick Of It, the prime minister’s enforcer who played such vicious insider hardball politics that everyone in the administration was afraid of crossing him.

As is often the case when one party gets a shellacking, people within the losing party start pointing fingers, shifting the blame, and leaking their version of events to the press.. This article discusses all the rumors surrounding the firing of Wiles and being replaced by Miller.

Several narratives, some contradictory, have filled the absence of any clear explanation behind Susie Wiles being replaced by Stephen Miller within three days of the Republican Party’s midterm loss — and all of them are dramatic. One such account said Trump was yelling at Susie Wiles and continued yelling until she left the room, while another says Trump would never do that to Susie. One account says Susie Wiles did not want to continue at the hectic job for long as she just recovered from breast cancer, while another says she had a Camp David plot up her sleeve to save her job.

One narrative claims that Susie Wiles was the lid to all that was happening inside the White House. And all that got leaked out to the media came from her as she decided what to leak and what not.

Susie Wiles had allegedly planned a behind-the-scenes meeting at Camp David with her loyalists in a last-ditch attempt to retain her position, even as the president was preparing to replace her with Stephen Miller. According to reports, Wiles had booked an offsite meeting at the presidential retreat for Saturday, November 7, inviting White House officials and aides considered close to her. The meeting was reportedly intended to work out how she could survive the leadership shake-up and remain in power.

As is always the case, these leaks are more about advancing the preferred narrative of the leaker than of any commitment to the truth, so make of it what you will

Also Trump has asked Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), to be his press secretary even though he, being the head of a mixed martial arts outfit, is even less qualified for the job than his ill-fated predecessor Katie Zacharia, incredible as that is. Trump likes to think of himself, without any evidence of course, as a tough guy and no doubt thinks that having White speak for him will help support his self-image.

Trump described White, who staged a cage-fighting spectacle at the White House to mark the president’s 80th birthday in June, as “a violent Fighter and Warrior”, credentials unlike any ever used to describe previous press secretaries.

Trump added that he asked White, a vocal supporter who campaigned for him in 2024, to bring six UFC fighters with him to serve as press aides. “We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left,” Trump wrote. “Dana, please take the job!”

It was unclear if the job offer was part of an actual plan, or an attention-grabbing stunt from a president desperate to change the subject from the huge losses suffered by his party in elections this week.

There was no immediate response from White, who, some observers noted, might hesitate to leave a lucrative role running the UFC, which has earned him a fortune estimated to be in excess of $600m, for a job in government service that pays $195,000 a year.

With Miller and White, it looks like Trump has decided that what he needs is pugnacious loyalists around him rather than people with sophisticated approaches to politics and people to repair the wreckage that he caused.

What could possibly go wrong?