White House's Miller suggests Latin American military leaders ignore their lawyers

Source: MS NOW

White House’s Miller suggests Latin American military leaders ignore their lawyers

When Donald Trump’s most controversial aide starts advising officials not to listen too much to attorneys, it’s best not to look away.

Mar. 6, 2026, 3:30 PM EST
By Steve Benen

In Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part II,” a character named Dick the Butcher tells a confederate, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” There’s long been debate over the meaning of the line, but the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a 1985 opinion that he interpreted it to mean that “disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

This came to mind while watching White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speak at the Americas Counter Cartel Conference on Thursday, in which he had quite a bit to say to a group of Latin American military leaders.

At the heart of Miller’s pitch was the idea that it was necessary to combat drug cartels, not through law enforcement techniques or border control, but rather by using deadly military force.

“[What] we have learned after decades of effort is that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem,” he said. “There are elements of the problem that require a criminal justice solution, to be sure, but just as we fought al-Qaida and fought ISIS with the tip of a very lethal sphere, the reason why this is a conference with military leadership, and not a conference of lawyers, is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power.

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Read more: https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-houses-miller-suggests-latin-american-military-leaders-ignore-their-lawyers