Does Stephen Miller Speak for Trump? Or Vice Versa?

Stephen Miller’s corner office in the West Wing of the White House is utterly barren—no pictures on the walls, no books on the shelves, no indication even of who inhabited the space a month earlier, before the Obama administration cleared out. “Couldn’t tell you,” Trump’s intense and polarizing 31-year-old senior policy adviser says with a shrug. Miller isn’t being unfriendly. Rather, his spartan surroundings and indifference to small talk are byproducts of a life pared of every detail that doesn’t advance the singular glory of Donald J. Trump. Concerned that Trump wasn’t accruing the praise Miller felt was merited, he wanted to set the record straight. “Donald Trump has fundamentally realigned American politics,” he says, stabbing a finger on his desk. “It’s time the media acknowledge this and give him the credit he deserves.”

That’s not, to put it mildly, the story preoccupying the media right now. Over the last few weeks, Trump’s White House has exploded in chaos and infighting—a situation Miller exacerbated by helping to mastermind the sudden and much-criticized rollout of Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries, which federal judges swiftly blocked. In fact, it was no accident that the order was sprung without warning on a Friday afternoon. Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon arranged the timing in the expectation that opponents, freed from work on the weekend, would stage huge protests—drawing maximum attention and galvanizing Trump supporters as the president followed through on a controversial campaign promise, says a senior administration official.