One was a wild-eyed zealot with a persecution complex. The other was a dead-eyed extremist with a persecution fetish. Together, they helped make xenophobia a brand—and rode it straight into the bloodstream of American power.
Before Stephen Miller was conjuring immigration bans from a West Wing office like a white nationalist Rasputin, he was a nobody fresh out of Duke University—furious, pinched, and already seething with ideological resentment. And before Michele Bachmann imploded on the national stage with her migraine-inducing presidential run, she was just a first-term congresswoman with a voice like a dial-up modem and the policy chops of a Home Ec dropout. When the two of them found each other in 2007, it was less a political partnership and more a mutual infection.
Miller became Bachmann’s press secretary. That means he got paid to make her sound smarter. Let that sink in.
Their bond was forged in delusion and weaponized ignorance. She believed carbon dioxide was “harmless.” He believed brown people at the border were an existential threat. She told TV audiences that swine flu outbreaks were linked to Democrats. He quietly studied how to launder racism into national security policy. She barked insanity on live television. He packaged it in press releases and slipped it to friendly reporters.
They were perfect for each other.
“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax,” Bachmann said in 2008, as Miller chewed his way through whatever soul he had left. “It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum.” This was the intellectual atmosphere Miller cut his teeth in—foghorn-level stupidity delivered with absolute confidence, and rewarded with airtime.
He lasted just under two years in her office, long enough to sharpen his knives and realize he was the smarter of the two—if not the less dangerous. According to his mentor David Horowitz, Miller grew disillusioned with Bachmann, reportedly calling her a “flake” on his way out the door. But let’s not pretend he disapproved of her views. He simply thought she was bad at executing them.
So he moved on—to John Shadegg, then Jeff Sessions, then the Trump campaign. Every time he switched offices, his rhetoric got colder, slicker, more efficient. But the bones of the ideology? Same as it ever was. Blame immigrants. Distrust Muslims. Treat the Constitution like a vending machine that only works if you’re white, male, and angry.
Bachmann, meanwhile, crashed her own clown car into the 2012 Republican primary and was never heard from again—at least not in places where facts matter. She now presides over the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, a theocratic sandbox for Christian nationalists who think The Handmaid’s Tale was a blueprint. There, she preaches about divine wrath and America’s descent into gay socialism or whatever new apocalypse she’s marketing this week.
And yet, Miller never truly left her shadow. He simply cleaned it up. He learned that incoherent fear-mongering is more effective when delivered with the affect of a DMV employee and the moral compass of a man who files court briefs the same way others swat flies — without hesitation, remorse, or a second thought. He didn’t just inherit her talking points. He refined them into bureaucratic weaponry.
In 2025, Miller is back in the White House, having greased his way into the second Trump administration like a tapeworm finding an old friend. Now he’s not just whispering to power—he is power. His fingerprints are on everything from the proposed mass deportation plans to the legal frameworks that would allow them to bypass due process altogether.
“They want a million-dollar trial in front of a communist judge for each invader? How about — hell no,” he snarled on Fox News in March 2025.
But wait—he wasn’t done. “Friendly reminder: If you illegally invaded our country the only process you are entitled to is deportation.” That’s not policy. That’s fascist fan fiction dressed up as public safety.
Miller has openly advocated invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—because nothing screams “modern governance” like laws written when leeching was a medical treatment. He doesn’t want immigration reform. He wants a mass purge. And he wants it fast.
The partnership that began in a forgotten congressional office in 2007 has become something far more toxic than either of them could have imagined: a template. Bachmann normalized the crazy. Miller mechanized it. She screamed it into a megaphone. He carved it into executive orders. And through it all, their core strategy never changed: invent an enemy, moralize the hate, and act like the victim.
Together, they taught the modern GOP that cruelty isn’t just effective—it’s addictive. That facts are optional, but fear is essential. That you can ride bullshit all the way to power, as long as you wrap it in a flag and shout “freedom” loud enough.
Their alliance didn’t last long. But like a dry spark on a pile of oily rags, it didn’t need to. It only needed to ignite.
And now the whole damn house is on fire.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.