From High School Loner to White House Chief of Staff: The Serious Kid I Hired at 15 Just Got His Dream Job. How I Employed Stephen Miller

The Pipe-Smoking Ninth Grader Who Became Chief of Staff

I was Stephen Miller's first boss. In 2001–2002 a 15- or 16-year-old santa monica high school student walked into the offices of the Santa Monica Observer and asked if he could write local editorials. That kid was steve miller.

Even then he was serious, cerebral, quiet, and studied. At an age when most teenagers think about baseball or girls, he was reading, thinking, and writing about policy. He showed up in a jacket and tie-sometimes a smoking jacket-and smoked a pipe. In ninth grade. He wrote long, carefully argued pieces condemning the mandatory Freshman Seminar, the school's required course in social justice and redistributive economics. Roughly a quarter of one piece focused on the Holocaust before drawing connections then popular in the curriculum. He already held clear views on border security and America's role in the world, including skepticism about NATO. As I've noted on social media, he was obviously brilliant even then; his genius is plain even to his enemies.

I read the Freshman Seminar piece and called him. "I'll print this if you want me to, Steve," I told him. "But I'm warning you now-people will hate you if I do. Think about it overnight."

The next day he called back. "I've thought about it as you asked me to, Mr. Ganezer. I've decided that I don't care what people think about me. I don't care if people hate me. So go ahead and print it."

That was the same kid a third-grade teacher later described as a "creepy loner" who ate glue (the teacher was subsequently suspended by the district). By high school he was no longer that. He was already the student who stood for the Pledge when others didn't, who appeared on conservative talk radio, and who wrote a letter to the Observer stating that Osama bin Laden would feel very welcome at santa monica high school. His parents were Democrats; he had become a conservative after reading Wayne LaPierre's Guns, Crime, and Freedom.

He argued with me once that NATO had no purpose and should be disbanded. I have a Masters in Russian Studies from Stanford, so I argued with him that it was the most successful military alliance in world history. "No it's not," he said, supporting his case.

Miller graduated from Samohi and went to Duke. Then he interned at Breitbart (where he met Steve Bannon), and wrote speeches for conservative Sen. Jeff Sessions. When Donald Trump called Sessions in early 2016 looking for a speechwriter, Sessions recommended "this weird Jewish kid from Santa Monica... He's strange, but an amazing speech writer, actually." Trump hired him. Miller wrote the inaugural address and served through the first term and into the second as a senior adviser, speechwriter, and policy architect. On November 6, 2026, President Trump named him White House Chief of Staff, effective Monday, November 9, succeeding Susie Wiles. Trump called him one of his most trusted advisors. Allies describe him as the administration's most organized and competent operator.

The kid who didn't care whether people hated him for printing an honest editorial has spent the better part of two decades demonstrating the same focus, loyalty, and clarity of purpose in far higher stakes.

Me? I'm still publishing the Observer. From time to time I wonder whether I worried too much about what people thought. And now that Steve is Chief of Staff, I might just hit him up for a job. After all, I gave him his first one. Fair's fair. Resume available upon request-and I promise not to smoke a pipe in the Oval.