Conservative Stars Line Up Behind Stephen Miller After Establishment Attacks

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Ron Sachs - Pool/Getty Images
Katie McHugh

The New York Times is trying to slap senior White House adviser Stephen Miller as a “far-right gadfly with little policy experience” who supposedly got promoted beyond his capabilities into President Donald Trump’s administration.

Miller is a tough and determined populist, but he is portrayed merely as a bomb-throwing email spammer in the article by Times reporters Glenn Thrush and Jennifer Staunheir:

As a top aide to Mr. Sessions, the conservative Alabama senator, Mr. Miller dispatched dozens and dozens of bombastic emails to congressional staff members and reporters in early 2013 when the Senate was considering a big bipartisan immigration overhaul. Mr. Miller slammed the evils of “foreign labor” and pushed around nasty news articles on proponents of compromise, like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida…

The ascent of Mr. Miller from far-right gadfly with little policy experience to the president’s senior policy adviser came as a shock to many of the staff members who knew him from his seven years in the Senate. A man whose emails were, until recently, considered spam by many of his Republican peers is now shaping the Trump administration’s core domestic policies with his economic nationalism and hard-line positions on immigration.

It’s curious the Times would claim Miller had “little policy experience,” given how many prominent conservative writers credit his back-room efforts with Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions for derailing wage-slashing globalist trade deals and immigration-expanding legislation.

At age 22, Miller was one of youngest (if not the youngest) press secretaries on the Hill for then-Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann. At age 24, Miller became the press secretary for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he first worked with Sessions. As CNN reports, “it was with Sessions where Miller came to be known as a skilled operator and true believer in conservative immigration policy. Miller helped his boss become the most outspoken critic of the 2013 bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration reform bill, penning a handbook filled with talking points on the issue and helping him lead the charge behind the scene to kill the measure.”

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Steven Miller

Sessions credited Miller, then his communications director, for quickly and thoroughly compiling critical facts about the Gang of Eight bill that stopped it from passing through the House and landing on President Barack Obama’s desk. “We had been working on the ideas in it for months, and Stephen put it in the handbook in a very quick time in a very cogent fashion. It was very timely and it impacted the outcome of the vote,” Sessions told Politico in June. Miller “captured Sessions’ voice,” as another Sessions staffer said, “was able to anticipate what he needed for an interview or a speech.”

Miller’s reach extended far. “A combination wonk and flack who not only formulates policy but also writes speeches, press releases, and op-eds and assists reporters with scoops and story pegs and telling details, Miller is the populist counterpart to liberal wunderkinds Ezra Klein and Ben Rhodes,” wrote Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti in December. “He’s one of the most effective aides in Washington—despite having lived here for less than a decade.”

National Review editor Rich Lowry attributed the Gang of Eight bill’s failure to Sessions and Miller. “He did more than anyone perhaps except Jeff Sessions himself to bring down the Gang of Eight bill,” Lowry wrote on Feb. 2. “It’s easy to see how he climbed so high in the Trump world, and in the area of immigration policy, few are as committed or as fluent on the details.”

Radio host Laura Ingraham also credited Miller for his role in halting the Gang of Eight bill. “Stephen was very important from an inside policy angle in the effort to stop and expose the Gang of Eight bill and the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Ingraham said. “He knew their vulnerabilities, and understood the substantive argument that led to their defeat.”

“The ‘gadflies’ are those who spouted mindless generalities to support the doomed initiatives,” she added.

Miller’s arrival in the White House thrilled conservatives who recognize his tireless work on behalf of a nationalist, populist agenda on immigration and trade.

“I’ve known Stephen Miller for many years, and he is a principled conservative, who played a pivotal role for the president during the campaign as a key speechwriter and advisor,” Fox News host Sean Hannity told Breitbart News. “I also know he is exactly the type of person any administration needs. He is smart, he works long hours, rolls up his sleeves, and serves the president and the country, and never looks for credit.”

“What the Alt-Left Radical media is doing is systematically trying to vilify and demonize any and all people who support and serve the president,” Hannity added. “The media, generally speaking, has lost any credibility they may have had left after the Wikileaks revelations. As I have said many times, ‘Journalism is dead,’ and they have devolved into the propaganda arm for the Democratic Party.”

From left, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and chief strategist Steve Bannon watches as President Donald Trump signs an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact agreed to under the Obama administration, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

From left, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and chief strategist Steve Bannon watches as President Donald Trump signs an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact agreed to under the Obama administration, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Best-selling conservative author Ann Coulter called the Times article “shockingly honest.”

“I THOUGHT IT WAS A FANTASTIC ARTICLE,” Coulter told Breitbart News. “I never knew Miller used to be a chain-smoker, which makes me love him even more! (No wonder he’s so smart.) ‘Gadfly’ is just one word in an otherwise SHOCKINGLY honest NYT article.”

“It was more like the old NYT, with reporters who may have been lefties, but were at least serious reporters,” she continued. “Most of the drivel from the NYT these days reads like something from Salon. This article got the facts right and threw in this one snippy word—a word that was belied by the rest of the article. Good reporting. Good article.”

Coulter has frequently heaped praise on Miller and on Trump for hiring him:

Miller himself said he is carrying out the same agenda that propelled Trump to the White House. “My driving passion throughout my professional career has been to fight for social and economic justice for working families who are not paid enough, respected enough, or protected enough because of a system that tilts unfairly towards the largest and powerful special interests,” Miller told Breitbart News.

“I am now privileged beyond words to work for a president who is a tireless voice and unyielding champion for every working person in this country who deserves a brighter future.”

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