A top White House official is ramping up “apocalyptic and authoritarian rhetoric” with a barrage of threats to crack down on opposition to the Trump administration, Zeteo’s Andrew Perez argued Friday in a new analysis.
White House Chief of Staff and “shadow president" Stephen Miller on Thursday spoke at an event that critics have labeled as an affront on free speech, Perez wrote.
Titled the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism,” the Washington, D.C. event saw Miller boast of the Trump administration’s newfound focus.
Miller reportedly described an effort to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.”
Perez expressed concern that the Trump administration’s definition of terrorism has been broadly expanded in recent months.
Under a recent Trump directive, federal law enforcement agencies have been instructed to investigate Americans who meet new indicators of potential domestic terrorism, which include publicly expressing “anti-Americanism” views or expressing “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family.”
“A Rush Limbaugh fan as a teen, Miller has always dreamed of crushing the left,” Perez wrote. “Now, he’s getting to use the full force of the federal government to lead an all-out war on liberals, progressives, and leftists – and he’s throwing it in all our faces with his characteristically apocalyptic and authoritarian rhetoric.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed the “radical left” for the increase in domestic political violence, claims that were carried by Miller on Thursday. However, multiple studies have shown political violence in the United States is perpetrated by “right-wingers” at a significantly higher rate than those labeled as being politically left.
A study published last year from the CATO Institute found that terrorist attacks propagated by “right-wingers” accounted for 11% of murders since 1975, whereas “left-wing terrorists” were responsible for 2%. A 2024 study by the Justice Department (DOJ) found that right-wing acts of political violence “outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” though the Trump administration quietly scrubbed the DOJ study from its website last year.
“An administration concerned about political violence would not see its president offer mass pardons and clemency to the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as part of an effort to overturn the 2020 election, nor would it demand judges throw out related seditious conspiracy convictions against Proud Boys and Oath Keepers,” Perez wrote.
“No, this administration is led by fascists, like Stephen Miller, who is living out his violent fantasy.”