Ashley Parker

And so he basically spent his four years out of power working quietly and privately to ensure that if he and Trump came back to office, he would have all the levers and tools of the federal bureaucracy at his disposal.

I think it's important to understand a couple of things, how close to the president he is, just how broad his purview is and how he has his hand in policies that people might not expect, like the Trump administration's war against higher education and against Harvard, right?

People, again, they think of immigration, they maybe think of foreign policy, but they don't necessarily think of all the other areas where Stephen Miller is playing a role.

And I think the other thing that's important to understand about Stephen Miller is he's confided in friends and colleagues that he does like playing this role of the gleeful contrarian or the troll who makes liberals' heads explode.

But at this point, the caricature that we see on TV and interviews on CNN and elsewhere has now become his true character.

There is not a real difference between

between public and private Stephen Miller and the intensity of his convictions.