Miller’s earlier arguments on Venezuela and the U.S. border
More than a year before an American military operation deposed Nicolás Maduro, Stephen Miller—now a White House chief of staff for policy—argued that Maduro was dispatching gang members into the United States, according to The Associated Press.
In the closing stretch of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign, Miller told reporters: “If you’re a dictator of a poor country with a high crime rate, wouldn’t you send your criminals to our open border?” The AP described Miller as a prominent policy figure in the administration, and it noted that critics say his rhetoric about foreign nations and immigrants echoes racist and imperialist ideas that have undergirded U.S. and other military actions for centuries.
Response from critics and administration spokespeople
The AP said a joint statement from Spain and five Latin American governments following the Venezuela operation called for “mutual respect, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and nonintervention.” The AP also reported that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., described the administration’s Venezuela policy as “old-fashioned imperialism.”
On the administration side, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded to accusations of racism, saying: “Advocating for policies that put American citizens first isn’t racist. Anyone who says so is either intentionally lying or just plain stupid,” according to the AP.
“Reverse colonization” and Western aid, in Miller’s words
The AP described how Miller argued about U.S. and Western policy toward developing countries. Shortly after the period the AP characterized as leading up to the Venezuela operation, Miller wrote on social media that after World War II, “The West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories,” describing the policy as a “kind of reverse colonization.”
In the same post, the AP said Miller argued that the “neoliberal experiment” was “a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”
Miller’s framing of Venezuelan oil and U.S. interests
Two weeks before the AP said Maduro was arrested, Miller in December echoed arguments by President Donald Trump that the Venezuelan oil industry had been seized from American interests. The AP reported that Miller wrote on social media that Venezuelan oil production was created through “American sweat, ingenuity and toil,” and that its “tyrannical expropriation” was “the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property.”
The AP said Miller added that the assets were “used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
A U.S. military posture described as setting terms in Venezuela
In January, the AP reported, Miller told reporters that U.S. leverage in Venezuela included an oil embargo and that Venezuela required U.S. permission for commerce. Miller said, “We have an oil embargo in Venezuela for them to do any kind of commerce. They need our permission,” according to the AP.
The AP also reported that Miller framed the U.S. military presence as an ongoing operation with enforceable conditions, saying: “This is an active and ongoing U.S. government military operation, and so, of course, we set the terms and conditions.” He added that the administration’s “conversations are that we are very much getting full, complete and total cooperation from the government of Venezuela,” and he said, in the AP account, that cooperation would make “the people of Venezuela…richer than they ever have before,” while also benefiting the United States “in terms of economic, security and military cooperation, counter-narcotics, counterterrorism and every other dimension of our security.”
Military strength, “iron laws,” and Greenland
The AP said Miller also laid out a broader approach to international affairs during a wide-ranging January interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. In that exchange, Miller said, “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”
The AP reported that Miller dismissed concerns that Trump’s vows to take Greenland from Denmark could lead to conflict with Europe. Miller said: “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”
Sovereignty questions and Miller’s view of U.S. influence
The AP reported that in the same Tapper interview, Miller rejected the idea of U.S. support for Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to lead the country, calling it “absurd and preposterous” and not “even a serious question.” The AP said Miller’s argument relied on the military’s posture.
Miller told Tapper, in the AP account, that the United States was using its military “to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.” He also said the administration viewed the “Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine” as “all about securing the national interest of America,” and he argued that “the future of the free world…depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology,” according to the AP.
The AP said Miller criticized what he described as the post–World War II approach in which “the West began apologizing and groveling and engaging in these massive reparations schemes.”
“Tinpot communist dictators” and continuity of earlier claims
In the Tapper interview, the AP reported, Miller defended the administration’s Venezuela operation while echoing earlier assertions about criminals from Venezuela entering the United States. The AP quoted Miller saying, “We’re not going to let tinpot communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country.”
Domestic policy remarks: Minneapolis protests and ICE
The AP said Miller continued pushing the administration’s stance on domestic issues, including immigration enforcement and partisan politics. On Tuesday, following nationwide protests in Minnesota after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman, Miller wrote on social media that Americans were voting “overwhelmingly for mass deportation,” and that “Congress passed laws requiring it and then passed new legislation to fully fund it.”
The AP reported that Miller characterized the response as Democratic backing of resistance to law enforcement, writing that the response of the Democrat Party and its activists was to support and orchestrate “violent resistance against federal law enforcement.” The AP also said Miller posted separately that if Democrats won, they “would have made every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince.”