Washington [US], November 8: President Donald Trump on Friday named Stephen Miller, a key architect of his hardline immigration policy, as the next White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles days after Republicans suffered a crushing election defeat.
Miller, currently deputy chief of staff, will take over on Monday.
"I wanted to make a change. I think Susie's done a very good job, great job. But I just wanted to make change," Trump told reporters at the White House.
"We gotta make moves. Sometimes in life you have to make moves." Wiles will move to Trump's "political operation," the president said, without specifying her new role.
Multiple US media outlets reported that she submitted her resignation on Thursday evening, with insiders telling them that Trump had held Wiles responsible for the election debacle.
Democrats scored a blowout victory in Tuesday's congressional elections, taking control of both chambers and putting them in a position to block Trump's legislative agenda and launch investigations into his administration.
Trump had cast the elections as a referendum on his policies. But voter anger on issues of affordability, including elevated fuel prices arising from the Iran war, delivered a stinging repudiation.
The Republican defeat has kicked off a struggle within the party over its direction and fuelled speculation about changes to his Cabinet and inner circle. Wiles' departure marks the first such change since the vote.
Hardliner faces prospect of congressional scrutiny Miller "gets it," Trump told reporters, noting that the aide has been with him from "the beginning." "He'll do a great job, great manager," the president said.
Miller, 41, is one of the few Trump loyalists to have served across his first and second terms.
During Joe Biden's presidency, Miller helped lay the groundwork for Trump's return to the White House. A close confidant who has written many of Trump's speeches, he is a driving force behind the president's policies, including the administration's mass deportation campaign and efforts to end birthright citizenship.
The aggressive tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including operations in which two US citizens were killed, have contributed to declining support for Trump's policies.
Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, who is expected to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee in the newly elected Congress, pledged further investigations into Miller's role in immigration policy.
"Stephen Miller should lawyer up," Garcia said in a statement.
Loyal aide and first female chief of staff Wiles, a veteran Florida political strategist who helped lead Trump's presidential campaign, was the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff.
Regarded as fiercely loyal and discreet, she was responsible for organizing the president's day-to-day work. Her breast cancer diagnosis became public in March. In September, she announced that she had beaten the disease.
Wiles, 69, raised eyebrows in December last year with her unusually candid - and at times critical - remarks about Trump in a Vanity Fair article.
She said, for example, that he "has an alcoholic's personality." The magazine did not quote her full sentence in that passage, and Wiles later accused it of taking her remarks out of context.
Source: Qatar Tribune
