Bret Baier: Trump's Elevation Of Stephen Miller To Chief Of Staff "Signals That The President Is Girding For A Battle"
FOX News chief political anchor Bret Baier reacts to Stephen Miller becoming President Donald Trump's chief of staff and discusses what the move signals.
SANDRA SMITH, FOX NEWS: Let's get to our chief political anchor and executive editor of Special Report Bret Baier is joining us now on the breaking news on this Friday afternoon. Brett, after a very big week, this is big news.
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS CHIEF POLITICAL ANCHOR: It is big news. I will tell you that privately, Susie Wiles said that this might happen and was prepared for it, that a change might come, that the president would look for something after a loss like we saw on Tuesday. And following Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller obviously knows everything about everything as far as how things work.
I do think that, as opposed to what Mark said, it signals something else. It signals that the president is girding for a battle. Stephen Miller is not the guy that you're reaching out to Democrats with to make a deal on immigration. I'm sure is the person who has driven a lot of the immigration and deportation rules that we saw up until this point. Some that were not in favor by the voters on Tuesday, but this signals that the president is girding for for a battle. That said, Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows pointed this out.
He is combative on the camera, but behind the scenes he works a lot of different levers and has his hands in a lot and had his hands in a lot already. He is the guy that knows how executive orders work the best, and as far as how the president is going to operate in the next two years, that is how he's going to get things done, that he wants to get done, that doesn't include Congress.
JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS: Yeah, Bret, having known Stephen myself for, gosh, more than 10 years now, I mean this is a guy whose head is filled with facts and figures and he has a tremendous amount of knowledge about everything that goes on in this country. I mean you can literally talk to him about anything he's got a ready answer for it, but as you pointed out, he publicly is very combative, though behind the scenes he probably tippers that down, unless maybe a staffer is disagreeing with him, but he is a chief of staff who not only will help run the White House, but also could serve as counsel to the president on so many different issues beyond immigration.
BAIER: Yeah, and listen, he was one of the key architects of the transition when President Trump won again in 24, and it took the two, almost the four years, building up what was going to happen in the first hundred days. If you remember, he was kind of running point on that 100 day sprint of all of those executive orders, which were the most in the incoming president had done ever. And so he knows the legal ways around, you know, for executive orders and executive action.
As far as his foreign policy, he's not super forward leaning on that. But as chief of staff, you are making the trains come in and out. You control who sees the president, kind of what his schedule looks like a lot of that. But this president is unique. He controls a lot of it himself. He makes the phone calls and he's a unique individual when it comes to that as far as presidential priorities.
