By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
President Donald Trump on Friday announced that Stephen Miller will become his chief of staff to replace Susie Wiles, who will be moved to another position.
The news follows significant Republican losses in the midterm elections.
Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and a vocal proponent of the administration’s mass deportations policy agenda, will become the chief of staff starting on Monday, he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
As for Wiles, who was his campaign manager before joining the White House, Trump said she will be moving to the “Trump Political operation.”
“I want to thank her for her service as chief of staff. She has done a great job,” he wrote.
In a post on X, Wiles wrote that Friday “is my last day as White House chief of staff” and that “serving President Trump in the White House has been the honor of a lifetime.”
“I’m so proud to have been a part of what we’ve accomplished together, from securing our border and cutting taxes to strengthening our economy and putting America First,” she added. “More than anything, I’m grateful for the extraordinary people I’ve had the privilege of working alongside.”
“While my role may be changing, my commitment to the president and the mission never will.”
A White House official said that Wiles submitted her resignation on Thursday evening.
On Friday afternoon, Trump told reporters that he “wanted to make a change” with Wiles’ departure.
“I think Susie’s done a very good job, great job. But I just wanted to make it. Stephen’s been great, and … we gotta make moves. Sometimes in life, you have to make moves,” he said.
Trump added that Miller has “been with [him] from the beginning” and will “do a great job” managing White House operations.
The move comes as some figures on the right have called for Wiles to be removed in the wake of GOP midterm losses that handed control of Congress to Democrats.
“I think that you have to look to people like Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, and the political consultants that are there … because of the results, they should be removed and removed immediately,” Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House aide and Trump campaign manager, said in an interview with journalist Steven Edginton released on Friday morning.
Caroline Sunshine, a former staffer to Trump, told Fox News on Wednesday that Wiles “needs to resign” and said that “her campaign skills have not translated into governing.”
Responding to the announcement that Miller is now Trump’s chief of staff, some Democrats in Congress criticized the move.
“Stephen Miller is the most dangerous person in Trump’s administration and should be fired instead of promoted,” wrote Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., in a post on X. “Americans overwhelmingly voted to end the chaos and lower costs. Stephen Miller has done nothing but sow hatred and foster corruption.”
Miller has been a chief proponent of the second Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“Americans voting overwhelmingly for mass deportation,” he said in an interview with CNN earlier this year. “Congress passed laws requiring it and then passed new legislation to fully fund it. The response of the Democrat Party and its activists has been to support and orchestrate violent resistance against federal law enforcement.”
Before the midterm elections, Miller also focused on what he suggested was Democratic-run states’ reluctance to check whether people on voter rolls were citizens.
“Not one Democrat state — not one — has either a.) checked the citizenship status of their voter file or b.) shared their voter records with [the Department of Homeland Security] to check citizenship. The total number of illegal and non-citizen voters is astronomical,” he said on Sunday.
Earlier this year, Wiles confirmed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer before she announced in September that she was free of the disease.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
