Watch: White House Briefing Goes Off the Rails as Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller Wails at Reporters

‘It Reveals Your Cosmopolitan Bias to a Shocking Degree’

Three days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, the LA Times reported that in high school, some of Stephen Miller’s classmates called him racist.

“Latino students recall Miller telling them dismissively that they would do better to work on their English language skills rather than spend their time forming clubs based on ethnicity. Some called him racist.”

In May, VANITY FAIR published a profile of Stephen Miller, titled, “How Stephen Miller Rode White Rage From Duke’s Campus to Trump’s West Wing.”

Stephen Miller, a Senior Advisor to the President – a title he shares with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner – is a long-time fan and protégé of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Both are closely aligned with former Breitbart publisher Steve Bannon, now Chief White House Strategist.

On inauguration day, the newly-sworn in President Trump told America, “for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential,” he said, in a speech that stunned the world. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

Stephen Miller is credited with writing those words.

Reporters Wednesday afternoon were surprised when White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders allowed Miller to take the podium to discuss the White House’s new anti-immigration bill, which would, as President Trump explained Wednesday morning, require people wanting to immigrate to America to already “speak English.”

It did not go well. For 30 minutes. In a stunningly unprofessional attack on the press.

At one point Miller berated New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush, saying: “Maybe it’s time we had compassion for American workers,” with the emphasis on “American.”

And here’s Miller berating CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a favorite target of the Trump administration. 

During his seven-minute tirade, Miller at one point called Acosta’s remarks “one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you have ever said, and for you that is really…” Miller chose not to complete that sentence.

The attack, though, began with an argument about the Statue of Liberty.

“I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here,” Miller condescendingly told Acosta, “but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty and lighting the world, it’s a symbol of liberty lighting the world. The poem you are referring to, which was added later, is not part of the original Statue of Liberty,” he said.

(Technically, he is right. The “Give me your tired,” poem, titled, “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus, was added as part of a fund-raising effort, but its words still have the same meaning, as Acosta said.)

“Jim, I appreciate your speech,” Miller said, then peppering Acosata with supposed statisticis.

“Tell me what years meet Jim Acosta’s definition of the law of the land,” Miller, nearly shouting, demanded of the CNN reporter. 

“I am shocked at your statement that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English,” Miller later told Acosta, whose parents, he said, were Cuban immigrants. 

“It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree,” Miller continued, again raising his voice, almost yelling, in an astonishingly inappropriate attack on a reporter.

“This is an amazing moment, no, this is an amazing moment,” Miller said, clearly performing for the cameras to the administration’s alt-right base, “that you would think only people from Great Britain and Australia is so insulting to millions of hardworking immigrants who do speak English from all over the world.” 

“The notion that you think this is a racist bill is so insulting,” Miller accused, telling Acosta he is advocating for “uncontrolled migration.”

“Insinuations like Jim made, trying to ascribe nefarious motives to a compassion immigration measure designed to help newcomers and current arrivals alike, is wrong,” Miller added.

At the end, Miller, perhaps remembering there’s a new Chief of Staff to whom he now reports, said: “I apologize Jim if things got heated, but you did make some pretty rough insinuations.” Acosta had not made any rough insinuations. “I think that went exactly as planned,” he appeared to joke. Chances are, given Miller’s past, he intended the attack all along.

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