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A senior White House official is leaving the Trump administration following the appointment of Stephen Miller as President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, replacing “Ice Maiden” Susie Wiles.
Richard Walters leaves his post as deputy chief of staff for legislative, policy and public affairs, Axios reported Sunday, making him the first to leave since Trump announced Wiles’ departure Friday. His departure comes after Republicans’ disastrous performance in last week’s midterm elections, which saw the Republican Party lose control of Congress.
Walters, described as “one of Wiles’ closest political lieutenants,” confirmed his resignation in a statement to the publication that said: “Serving President Trump has been the honor of my life and I will always be grateful to Susie Wiles for the opportunity.”
“Stephen is building an incredible and capable team to implement the president’s agenda and I look forward to being a part of it from the outside,” the 37-year-old added.
Miller has since said The Independent in a statement: “Richard has been an invaluable member of the White House and helped achieve some of the administration’s biggest victories.
“While he is gone, Richard will continue to assist us from outside as we continue to work with all our might to meet the expectations of President Trump and his courageous fight to save America.”
The Mississippian joined the White House in May to succeed James Blair, after serving as the longest-serving chief of staff in Republican National Committee history, working on all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns and serving as executive director of the president’s 2025 inaugural committee.
It was suggested a few weeks before the midterm elections that Trump might lash out and seek to blame members of his team if the Republican Party failed to cross the line.
New York Times Reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN that the president was furious with Wiles after Democrats scored victories across the country to secure a 54-44 majority in the Senate and at least 254-162 in the House of Representatives.
The president gave his first major interview since the disaster to CBS News. 60 minutes On Sunday, host Ross Douthat asked him, “In a past life, you were famous enough to say, ‘You’re fired’ quite often. After a big midterm loss like this, do you expect to fire anyone on your team?”
“Yeah,” Trump replied. “You do a little. A little. I love my office. I think they’re good. But I might make some changes. I don’t want to mention who.”
In the interview, the president admitted that his crackdown on illegal immigration may have been another reason why voters turned against his party last week, admitting that it had been “too tough”, but Miller’s rise means it is unlikely to be scaled back further, given that he is known as a hard-liner on the issue.
During Trump’s first term in 2018, Miller’s own uncle, retired neuropsychologist Dr. David Glosser, called him a “hypocrite” in an article written for Policyin which he points out that their own family, who fled anti-Semitic pogroms in Belarus, would not have been allowed into the United States if he had been in charge at the turn of the 20th century.
“I have watched with dismay and growing horror as my nephew, an educated man well aware of his heritage, become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country,” Glosser wrote.
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