Jake Tapper shuts down Stephen Miller as Trump aide blames media for mass confusion
CNN's Jake Tapper cornered far-right White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, as he tried to justify the Trump administration's discretionary freeze on federal grants announced by the Office of Management and Budget — and blame the media for the public's confusion on whether they're about to lose access to critical support programs.
"So let's just walk through this, because obviously there's confusion," said Tapper. "Is this pause going to affect Medicaid?"
"It does not affect any service that the government is required to provide, does not affect any entitlement, does not affect any service to citizens, does not affect any individual benefit, any public assistance program or anything of that nature," said Miller. "So we found, after the president had issued a pause on funding to [non-governmental organizations] that were settling illegal immigrants, we found that bureaucrats at HHS were trying to funnel billions of more dollars to those resettlement agencies and try to get around the executive order. It became clear that bureaucrats were still trying to funnel unapproved discretionary grants of funds to their pet projects."
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"So let's get into that, because a number of government-funded organizations — so these are organizations like Meals on Wheels, right? Their job, their mission — it's a private organization, they get grants from the federal government, they feed seniors. Meals on Wheels is currently in the dark. They don't know, does this order affect us? Does this mean we're not going to have any more funding coming in? They feed like 2 million seniors. So I'm just wondering, first of all, why a pause? An investigation, sure, I get that. Auditing? Sure. Why a pause?"
Miller dodged the question, redirecting back to his complaints about the civil service directing grants.
"Joe Biden gave just one NGO responsible for resettling illegal aliens $3 billion, with a B. $3 billion! President Trump, when he said drain the swamp, he meant it."
"Okay. I don't think anybody's taking issue with, if you find money that is being disbursed in an inappropriate way, halting it," said Tapper. "I think what the confusion is, is this seemed to a lot of groups and a lot of states, Republicans, Democrats, independents, like a very sweeping order. And there is confusion ... we just talked to Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican, a Trump supporter. We just interviewed him. He said that there was a lot of confusion."
"Created by the media, Jake," insisted Miller.
But Tapper insisted that much of the confusion and anger is within Trump's own party.
"Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said, quote, 'nobody really knows how long,' unquote, this review of these federal funds is going to last. And she said it's, quote, 'been a big challenge,' unquote, to get answers from the Trump administration. So here's an opportunity. How long is this review going to take? And when does the federal funding for these programs resume?"
Miller once again refused to answer. As Tapper repeatedly asked this question, Miller finally said, "I am sorry that the media has falsely reported on this story."
"I don't know what you're talking about in terms of false reports," shot back Tapper. "It was a broadly written executive order."
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