The Washington power couple straddling the Trump-Musk feud
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here They're the Washington couple at the centre of power in the Trump administration. They're also straddling opposing sides of an explosive breakup between US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk . CNN reported last week that Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, would be departing her senior role at the White House as a top spokesperson and adviser for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. She was on her way to work for Musk as he went back to running his companies, helping the tech titan manage and arrange interviews unrelated to his time in government. Washington power couple - Katie Miller and her husband Stephen Miller. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty/CNN) But days later, amid the smoldering ruin of Musk and Trump's epic meltdown on Thursday over social media, that job suddenly took on a whole new layer. Among the attacks both men lobbed at each other was Musk endorsing the possibility of impeaching Trump and installing Vice President JD Vance in his place. Trump, in turn, raised the possibility of terminating federal contracts for Musk's companies. The episode has left the Millers on conflicting sides of the biggest breakup of Trump's second term, spawning gossip among White House aides and rounds of speculation about how the fallout could impact the political fortunes of one of the most powerful couples in Trump's Washington, where loyalty reigns. Elon Musk, centre, and Stephen Miller, right, during a meeting in the Oval Office in February. (Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty/CNN) "Everyone is talking about it," a former Trump staffer told CNN. Katie Miller was in Texas last week for the series of interviews Musk held with space and technology journalists as SpaceX's Starship had its ninth test flight. It was there that Musk first delicately expressed he was "disappointed" in the Republican's domestic policy bill in an interview with CBS News. Her X account is now a steady stream of laudatory posts about Musk and his companies, with a banner photo of a SpaceX rocket launching into space and a biography that says, "wife of @stephenm." Her only social media post on Friday was a reply with laughing emojis to an altered photo of her husband as a Home Depot employee attached to a post about immigration raids on the chain's stores. Elon Musk and his son X Æ accompanied by Katie Miller at the US Capitol Building in May. (via CNN) One former colleague told CNN that she will ultimately need to make a choice. "She has a choice between Elon and Trump, but it can't be both," the administration official said. Musk unfollowed Stephen Miller on X on Thursday, although both Millers continued following Musk on the platform into Friday. There are divided views on how the situation will impact Stephen Miller's ascendance. Stephen Miller was a part of Trump's first administration. (AP) Among Trump's closest advisers, many believe he is surpassed in power only by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, fueling speculation among some over whether he could take over should Wiles decide to move on. "This whole thing will definitely make that more complicated," one senior White House official told CNN. "Katie being paid by Elon is not good for Stephen." Another senior White House official strongly pushed back on the idea that this episode with Musk would impact Miller in any way with the President. "Next to Susie, Trump trusts and relies on Stephen the most," the official said, adding that the President and top brass were understanding that his wife working for Musk had nothing to do with Stephen or the current state of events. Katie Miller declined to comment for this story. The Millers attend a state dinner in Washington to honour then-Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. (Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images via CNN) Deeply connected and influential in Republican circles and at the highest levels of government, Stephen Miller and Katie Miller (née Waldman) met during Trump's first term in 2018. He was a senior adviser and speechwriter at the White House; she was on the Department of Homeland Security's public affairs team and on her way to becoming then-Vice President Mike Pence's communications director. He developed a reputation as the architect of some of the administration's most hardline immigration policies, becoming an influential and trusted aide in the Trump orbit. She developed her own reputation as a staunch supporter of those policies, once reflecting on a trip to the US-Mexico border as the administration came under fire for its child separation policy. "My family and colleagues told me that when I have kids I'll think about the separations differently. But I don't think so … DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself – to try to make me more compassionate – but it didn't work," Miller told NBC News journalist Jacob Soboroff in an interview for his book, "Separated." The pair married at Trump's Washington, DC, hotel in February 2020. Trump attended the wedding. In the four years after Trump left office, both set their sights on a Trump return to the White House. Stephen Miller launched a conservative nonprofit group, America First Legal Foundation, that served in part as a prelude to the policy of Trump's second term. Katie Miller headed to the private sector, where she consulted a number of major companies, including Apple. They were also raising three young children. Stephen Miller returned to the White House in January with a vast mandate, deeply involved in many of the president's signature policy initiatives and further empowered from the first term. Katie Miller joined the administration as well, working on behalf of DOGE and Musk, who had become a new figure in the Trump orbit after being an active campaign surrogate and 2024 megadonor. Like Musk, Katie Miller was working at the White House as a "Special Government Employee", which limits the number of days one can work within the administration. As their professional lives intertwined, the couple also became personally close with Musk, socialising outside of work. In the heat of the Thursday afternoon social media showdown, Stephen Miller had been scheduled to appear on Larry Kudlow's show on Fox Business Network – an appearance that was canceled. "We lost Mr Miller to a meeting in the Oval Office. Perfectly understandable. When I was in government, it would happen all the time. We'd have to kill a TV show. You're at the president's beck and call," Kudlow said during his eponymous broadcast. This is not the first time Trump has divided a marital relationship. During his first term, Trump lashed out at the husband of one of his top advisers, Kellyanne Conway. Her husband, George Conway, had been intensely critical of Trump on social media. "He's a whack job. There's no question about it. But I really don't know him," Trump said at the time of George Conway. "I think he's doing a tremendous disservice to a wonderful wife." In 2023, the couple announced they were filing for divorce. George Conway, a prolific user of Musk's X platform and ardent anti-Trump figure, posted dozens of times about the Trump-Musk spat. "Does anyone have any updates on Katie Miller?" he asked Thursday evening. Donald Trump
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Instead, they were animated by issues that weren't so potent back in 2016, like the excesses of the 'woke' left and pandemic-era public health policy or anger at rising prices, crime, homelessness and an influx of migrants. In different ways, Joe Rogan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Musk each epitomise different facets of this enlarged Trump coalition. It seemed possible that vehement opposition to progressives would hold everyone together during the presidency, as it did during the campaign, and that maybe Trump would also do enough to please each group and avoid alienating a constituency. Less than five months into Trump's term, there are indications that this broader coalition is fraying. Polls suggest many young and non-white voters who backed Trump in November now disapprove of his performance. There haven't been as many examples of elite defections, but there have been many signs of queasiness with the excesses of his policies. The extent of Trump's tariffs, his defiance of the courts, his attacks on high-skilled immigration and higher education, and more simply go beyond what many of Trump's backers thought they were signing up to support. Musk's defection is not necessarily representative. His grievances may be personal as much as they're about policy. Still, Trump failed to keep Musk on board, and it seems to have been at least partly because of the challenge in reconciling the ideologically diverse factions in his orbit. And while Musk complained most loudly about how much the Republican tax and spending bill would add to the national debt, the possibility that other policies were a factor – like attacks on international students or reducing support for renewables – shouldn't be discounted. And even if other Trump policies, like deportations or universal tariffs, weren't problems for Musk, they might well erode Trump's support among other members of his coalition. Loading The return of deficit politics For the past decade or so, deficits haven't been a major issue in American politics. This is changing fast. The US fiscal picture has become markedly worse over the past few years. The national debt is projected to be well over 100 per cent of gross national product in a decade. Already, interest payments on the debt have reached nearly one-fifth of federal revenue. The country is projected to have trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future, even during a period of low unemployment and economic growth. High interest rates will make it expensive to finance additional debt. The deteriorating fiscal situation is beginning to affect politics, most obviously in the challenge of passing a big tax and spending bill. In the past, it was easy enough for Republicans to cut taxes. Now, with the deficit and interest rates so high, a nearly $3 trillion ($4.6 trillion) expansion in the debt over the next decade is suddenly not so easy to swallow. Loading This challenge for Republicans won't go away. The alliance between traditional and populist conservatives was much easier when Trump could promise tax cuts while sparing popular entitlement programs. As the burden of the debt mounts, this win-win proposition will be hard to sustain. Less obviously, the same fiscal issues will be a major challenge for the Democratic coalition as well. With all the fighting between progressives and moderates over the past decade, it's easy to overlook that deficit spending made it much easier for the party to stay unified. Mainstream Democrats could bridge the gap between the party's ideological wings by campaigning on investments in infrastructure and renewable energy as well as on modest but significant expansions of the social safety net, like paid family leave. The debt issue might prove to be even a bigger one for Democrats than Republicans. It's hard to say whether the Republican mega-bill is really the reason Musk broke with the president. Still, he called the bill an 'abomination'. And the potential power of this issue over the longer term should not be underestimated.
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