Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

What’s notable, in one sense, is how badly this project has failed. Despite months of effort, Trump and Miller have not come close to manufacturing the sense of fear or trauma out in the country they’d hoped for. But in the nascent Pritzker-Newsom understanding, assuming this will all take care of itself—that voters will resist Trump-Miller agitprop without prompting—is insufficient. We’ve learned, hearteningly, that majorities seem to harbor a deep attachment to liberal rights and liberties, one that instinctively recoils at masked kidnappings, at hypermilitarized vehicles on urban boulevards, at the trappings of totalitarian dictatorship. But this must be activated. That takes conflict and controversy—powerful imagery and language that rivets attention.

It’s not clear many Democrats understand this. Some Democrats have confided to reporters that they see this topic as a “trap” enticing them into a losing debate about crime. But why assume voters will automatically believe Trump’s occupations are actually about combating crime? This throws in the towel, right up front, on communicating to voters what this debate is really about: that Trump’s abuses should be utterly abhorrent to anyone who values living in a free society.

Do Democrats, broadly speaking, have a theory of this moment that’s consciously matched to MAGA’s authoritarian politics? They need one. Because guess who does have a theory of the moment? Miller does. And he’s amassing unprecedented power to put it into practice as we speak.