Few people can claim to have as close access to “Trumpworld” — the circle of advisors around Donald Trump — as Jason Miller. In fact, he spoke to the former president himself just yesterday.
Having been the chief campaign spokesman for the 2016 Trump campaign, Miller was drafted back for the final months of the re-election campaign, in June 2020. He co-presented a podcast, The War Room, with Steve Bannon, which was removed from YouTube following the Capitol Hill violence on January 6th, and he is currently CEO of a new social media platform, Gettr.
My first question: how likely is it that Donald Trump will run for President again in 2024?
“You know, if you’d asked me when President Trump first left office, what the odds were of him running again in in 2024, I probably would have said 50-50. But I think in recent weeks, seeing him back out on the campaign trail, it’s kind of the inverse effect, where the more that the media is attacking him and saying that he’s politically finished, I think the more that he wants to go and run for office. I’d probably put it at two to one odds that that he does go and run in 2024. So that’s making it more likely, in my estimation that he’s going to run in 2024.”
Given Miller’s ringside seat on the final months of the Trump Presidency, I asked him about some of the key moments on the inside. As a key advisor to the campaign – why did he lose? When did it all go wrong?
On the BLM protests
Eventually, we knew that the BLM movement would go too far. It didn’t go too far quick enough, though, if that makes sense. So we did see the number shift during the protests and such over the summer with Hispanic and Latino voters…. And probably you know, the election goes another month or so the way that things were trending in the overreach with the BLM move, we’re getting a little too crazy, I think President Trump wins.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
On Anthony Fauci
When you take a look at COVID I think the one strategic mistake that was made was the elevation of Dr. Anthony Fauci and some of the healthcare professionals… Here’s the problem, the administration inadvertently made Dr. Anthony Fauci a superstar, not just a superstar in the US but he became a global superstar. I personally think that Fauci is a clown, and he should have been fired… He’s effectively a bureaucrat, what he’s good at is keeping his job…. Anthony Fauci, in many ways, was Joe Biden’s most effective campaign trail surrogate, he was the single best ally that Joe Biden had for third party validator because he would constantly undermine President Trump.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
On getting the campaign messaging wrong
The biggest group where we underperformed were with people who had a negative image of both candidates, that was a group that President Trump won 90 to 10 over Crooked Hillary Clinton in 2016. But we lost with that group. And in 2020, and primarily, a lot of those folks who had negative opinions of both candidates. These are non political people, they don’t really care about the politics, what they want is to get life back to normal… If we’d made that pivot maybe several weeks earlier, with the simple message of “we’re gonna get life back to normal, Joe Biden’s gonna keep you in the basement” make it very simple. Make the binary choice, Biden basement, Trump life back to normal.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
On the events of January 6th
I know, when I chatted with the President that morning, he said, “Hey, what does the crowd size look like?” Then I heard Fox News on in the background say it looks pretty packed, they have a correspondent down there. But as far as the actual Capitol dynamic, what then ensued that with the violence and such, that literally was not anyone’s mind… The aspect of the whole rally at the Capitol and outside dynamics, nobody knew that part — within the Trump key advisors, we were all focused on what was going to happen when Vice President Pence got to those specific states. Okay, so there were people outside of that we’re going to be having a rally, okay, big deal. That’s in our minds, that was just okay. They’ll be there. They’ll have some banners, and they’ll cheer, that kind of thing. What then ensued, though, at the Capitol, nobody expected it. The Capitol Police didn’t expect it. Nobody on the Republican or Democrat side expected it. The focus was on what was going to be happening inside the Capitol that day.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
What should Trump have done differently?
Could the President had been more definitive? Could he have said things an hour earlier say than he did? Of course. I mean, every little thing has an impact. Would that have fundamentally changed either what happened that day, or the way that the media portrayed it? … I don’t think it ultimately would have changed.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
On GETTR and the challenge to first amendment rights
The President of the United States gets his first amendment rights completely knocked out and undercut kicked off of all platforms after January 6, effectively saying that he has a lifetime ban of being able to use his first amendment rights. And I think that is a I think that’s dangerous. Then you see even where we are now we have the White House saying, “Well, if you’ve been kicked off of one platform, you should probably kicked off of all the platforms,” — you have the White House of the United States of America, advocating that people lose all of their first amendment rights.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
Will Donald Trump join the platform?
Most of the conversations go to what compensation or what might be in it for President Trump to join the platform… It’s ready to go now and we want to get out and get it launched. Even if President Trump isn’t on board day one, let’s get it launched. Let’s make it successful. And hopefully we can get him to join us.
- Jason Miller, UnHerd
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