The New Republic published its big wrap-up of the year and, surprise, they found a bad guy. Forget highlighting actual leadership or results. They created a Scoundrel of the Year and slapped Stephen Miller’s name on it. Funny thing. That sounds more like an honor than an insult these days.

Miller is the new target, because the left always needs one.

What used to get labeled as Trump Derangement has simply evolved. It no longer needs Trump standing at the podium. The same fever now clings to anyone connected to him, like a virus that found a new host. The infection now settles on Stephen Miller.

Here is where it gets funny. Greg Sargent devotes most of his energy to turning Miller into the mastermind of cruelty. A dark force orchestrating immigration enforcement, criminal justice policy, and even the military. In other words, the villain from central casting.

Miller has amassed unprecedented power for a deputy White House chief of staff. He exerts extraordinary influence over an unusually large swath of the government, from immigration to criminal justice to even the military’s operations on American soil. Much of what defines public life in the Trump era—masked kidnappings on U.S. streets, standoffs between ICE goons and protesters, military patrols in U.S. cities—has been authored by Miller. His ever-present unctuous smirk suggests he’s visibly relishing the violent hatreds all this has unleashed. – Greg Sargent, The New Republic

Pick One: Monster or Mediocre?

Then, after carefully building this movie script version, Sargent pivots into another story entirely. Suddenly, Miller is also a failure. Ineffective. Unable to get anything done. A man whose grand authoritarian dream keeps falling apart.

Yet now that we’re one year into President Trump’s second term, it’s clear that in important ways, Miller is falling short of his most elaborate authoritarian designs. The deportations are lagging far behind his hopes. He has not persuaded Trump to deploy the dictatorial power he pines to see. And he has unleashed a cultural moment in defense of immigrants that is more powerful than anything he anticipated.

[…]

Last spring, only a few months into the new term, he was already privately shrieking at top ICE officials over lackluster deportations, angrily demanding the arrests of 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day.

Nine months later, Miller is still two-thirds short of that goal: Arrests are currently averaging around 1,100 daily.  – Greg Sargent, The New Republic

So which is it? Is he a scoundrel or a failure?

If Miller really holds this enormous spooky influence Sargent keeps warning us about, then why does he also describe him as constantly falling short. If Miller is failing as badly as Sargent claims, why hand him Scoundrel of the Year in the first place. You don’t usually give villain awards to people who can’t pull off the villainy.

That tells you something. This isn’t about reality. It’s about feelings.

To Sargent, talk of three thousand arrests a day and a million deportations a year sounds like a nightmare. To a lot of Americans, it sounds like finally taking the law seriously.

Then he admits the numbers aren’t actually there.

So the piece shifts into a strange tone. Half disappointment. Half outrage. Sargent scolds Miller for wanting aggressive enforcement, then complains that it only averages around one thousand arrests a day. In other words, Miller is horrifying… but also not efficient enough to justify the level of fear being sold.

Pick one.

Trump pulling out National Guard is also a sign that he isn’t really deploying quite the dictatorial power that Stephen Miller apparently wants him to, and that the courts are still functioning, at least to some degree, as I suggested in this piece: https://t.co/gyogZ2N2ML

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) December 31, 2025

Cue the Doom Music — Then Nothing Happens

Then comes the dramatic section on rule of law and due process. We are told Miller wants to erode both. We are warned he wants unchecked presidential power. Serious claims. And yadda, yadda, yadda.

In the next breath, Sargent admits the courts still work. Judges rule. Appeals happen. Policies get blocked and reworked.

So the system held. Great news, if you’re Greg Sargent. It kept the very people Trump warned about — they’re not sending their best — right where Sargent seems perfectly comfortable leaving them.

When Commentary Turns Into a Diary

At a certain point in the article, something becomes obvious that Sargent never admits out loud.

This isn’t really about policy. It’s about obsession.

Miller is not just a staffer in the story. He is the villain in the Gothic novel. The shadow at the edge of every frame.

Imagine hating someone so much that you create an entire award just to cope.

Sargent doesn’t analyze Stephen Miller. He obsesses over him. It reads less like politics and more like a long, worried diary entry.

One last detail that didn’t fit into Sargent’s horror-movie script:

Stephen Miller and his wife are having another baby.

JUST IN: Katie and Stephen Miller just revealed they have a BABY on the way

NOTHING terrifies the left more than the thought of more Stephen Millers roaming the country

Congrats, Katie and Stephen! pic.twitter.com/beKOJN5zuf

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 1, 2026

Terrifying stuff, I know. A man with a job, a wife, and kids. The very picture of stability the media claims to support until it shows up in the “wrong” household.

Congratulations to Stephen and his wife.
Scoundrel of the Year… and Dad of the Year at home. Seems like he’s doing just fine.

Feature Image: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons/edited in Canva Pro