Buck Brief - Stephen Miller Takes Charge as Trump Floats Amnesty?

Buck Sexton (0:00)

So the huge news that broke last week is still very much rocking Capitol Hill, the White House, all of DC, and with it all of the political world out there. And that is that Susie Wiles, the first female White House Chief of Staff, the longest serving Chief of Staff for President Trump submitted her resignation. Now that was on Thursday night of last week. And then Trump announced on Friday that Stephen Miller would become Chief of Staff effective today, so or this week, starting Monday, November 9th. Wiles moves to the Trump political operation. And Trump, of course, has praised her as praised her and called the change a necessary move. Look, this comes after the November 3rd wipeout for Republicans. So there's nothing surprising about that.

Trump was frustrated about the scale of the losses as he should be.

And he has reportedly blamed this in part on Wiles and the political team, some of whom it seems were overseas, making money, not in America during this campaign. There was that reporting.

Though people are saying, oh, well, both sides want to this. It's mutual. Look, this is the worst political ass kicking for the Republicans since Watergate. And that tells you, I think all you really need to know, of course, metaphorically, heads had to roll. Of course, people had to take the fall on this one. So that's not a surprise at all. I am encouraged that Trump has gone to one of the smartest and most capable people in his entire orbit being Stephen Miller. He is, of course, a Trump loyal loyalist, and everyone is using the same memes in the same conversation online, which is thinking of him as a wartime consulieri instead of a restraining force on Trump wartime consulieri, a reference to the Godfather and Michael Corleone talking about what was his name, Tom something or other guy who's German Irish and talking about how he's not a wartime consulieri. Essentially, when it comes to the violent times, you need somebody who's ready for that. Politically speaking, that's what we're talking about here. Stephen Miller is ready to mix it up with anyone and no one's going to back him into a corner. Nobody put Stephen Miller in a corner. So everyone's looking at this trying to figure out what the lame duck presidency with the Democrat Congress looks like going forward. The biggest single question on all of this is immigration. President Trump, in the 60 Minutes interview over the weekend with Ross Douthat, said that he's willing to do a deal with Democrats on immigration. Now, I've been through this before many times. I've seen Republicans talking about this and looked at the negotiations, whether it was the Gang of Eight, the Senate Gang of Eight, which stalled out Marco Rubio's career for a while because he was on the wrong side of that one. He was, and he admits that this was a learning experience, but he was on the wrong side of that amnesty discussion. At the time, this is a long time ago, during the Obama years, I think it was 2012, 2013

Now we are in a situation where people are saying Donald Trump is open to the idea of a limited amnesty, maybe for DACA, for people who are workers who have been here and been productive and all the rest of it. And this cannot stand. Trump is open to talking about it, I'm sure, in very Trumpian fashion. He's willing to have this conversation with the Democrats and see what concessions they're willing to make and on all the rest of it. But the notion that this at this stage of the game, after this wipeout, anybody who voted for Donald Trump, anybody in the Trump base thinks concession on really Trump's signature issue, which is deportation, securing the border and stopping the invasion of illegals into America, that is such a challenge to the future of this country as a coherent law and order based political entity in a constitutional republic. If you have open borders, at some point, you just cease to have a real country. You have some kind of economic zone. You have a a soup kitchen for the rest of the world. We give them all of our stuff. They arrive. We give them more. They're bitter about how we haven't given them enough. So they demand more and so on and so forth.

I don't think Trump can bend on this issue. I think that that is not feasible and he must recognize that at some level.

I'm hoping that's the case. Some people might point out that Trump isn't going to face and elector it again. And we have to see what that means. Now we have to also look at what does it mean that Stephen Miller, longtime Trump aide since 2016 and is going to be the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. I mean, yes, will Trump face the electorate again? No, but I think Trump realizes that part of his legacy is, of course, tied in always and forever with the base and the feelings of the people who voted for him. Stephen Miller, you would think, is likely to be a very, a proponent of very muscular immigration enforcement and not about to try to moderate on that issue. He's also the guy behind a lot of the executive orders and administrative action at the start of the Trump campaign or Trump presidency, rather, that is among the most important aspects of the Trump presidency because it's a lot of what got done related to all of that. So he's also going to have quite a hand in foreign policy. People, sources say he opposes prolonging the Iran war. He remains strongly pro-Israel. And Trump has hinted at further cabinet changes. So the White House is widely read as digging in for a siege rather than pivoting. Democrats are already signaling aggressive oversight of Stephen Miller and the administration, everything else starting in January. So that's definitely going to happen. So this is not a White House that is looking for conciliation. This is a White House that is battening down the hatches and getting ready for the storm that is going to come. And that is no surprise because I think quite honestly, any effort to reach out to Democrats would result in a hand slapped away and metaphorical spit in the face. They have no interest in working with Trump on any of this stuff. They have no interest on moderating any of their policies. In fact, this notion that woke 1 is gone or was crazy. No, woke 2 is just going to be them emboldened and back in power, all the same ideas, all the craziest stuff, the open borders, the transing your kids, the you name it, all these things that Democrats are in favor of.