How Stephen Miller Stokes Trump's Boundary-Pushing Impulses

Moments after federal officers fatally shot Alex Pretti, his body still lying facedown on an icy Minneapolis street, Customs and Border Protection officials texted Stephen Miller, the White House aide and presidential confidant who framed the government’s response.

While White House communication and policy aides tried to sort out what they knew, what they should say and who would brief President Trump, Miller jumped ahead. Three hours after the shooting, Miller told the world via X that the slain VA nurse was a “domestic terrorist” who had “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement,” a description that set off one of the Trump administration’s biggest political crises of the president’s second term.

None of the language Miller used had been approved or reviewed, said administration officials familiar with the matter. Miller, who shared a photo of the handgun found on Pretti’s hip with White House officials, told colleagues his comments were based on early information. Not long after Miller’s tweet, Trump posted the photo of the gun on his own social-media post, saying the weapon was loaded and ready to go. “What is that all about?” Trump wrote.

Video footage soon contradicted Miller’s portrayal of Pretti and marked a rare setback for the singularly powerful White House adviser who has shaped many of the president’s most incendiary impulses. Miller has been an architect in almost every boundary-pushing effort in Trump’s second term, according to White House officials familiar with the matter, including immigration sweeps in U.S. cities and the deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean. When protests spread in Minneapolis, Miller raised the idea of the president invoking the Insurrection Act to send in military troops, a possibility that Trump later voiced publicly, according to White House officials familiar with the matter.

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Early in Trump’s second term, Miller amassed power in his own homeland security council and outfoxed others with his command of the workings of government, according to White House advisers. His authority, officials said, derives from his ability to manage the president. He often uses gory images to persuade Trump. After a Department of Government Efficiency staffer, Edward Coristine, also known as “Big Balls,” was beaten in an attempted carjacking last summer, Miller brought the president a large photo of the bloodied man and told him that crime in Washington was climbing. Trump soon posted the photo himself on social media, and deployed the National Guard, saying it was necessary to make the city safe.

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