Stephen Miller has consistently been one of the most extreme anti-immigrant, pro-mass deportation voices in the Trump administration, and had his hands deeply in the policies that led to federal agents instituting a harsh crackdown in Minneapolis that led to multiple deaths. But now even he is trying to run away from it.
On Tuesday evening, CNN reported that Miller, who just days before called slain VA intensive care nurse Alex Pretti a terrorist who tried to "massacre agents," now says that the White House “provided clear guidance to DHS" to "create a physical barrier between the arrest teams" and protesters, and “we are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.”
The statement drew immediate response from commenters on social media, who said that things must be apocalyptically bad for the Trump team if even Miller realized he needed to point fingers over the situation.
"Miller tries to blame CPB, may all these murderers take each other down and crawl back in their hole," wrote former Politico foreign policy analyst Laura Rozen.
"This is why we record," wrote award-winning Atlanta News First investigator Brendan Keefe. "This is why filming law enforcement & govt activities is protected under the First Amendment. Without the multiple citizen videos, the government's false 'massacre' & 'assassinate ICE agents' & 'domestic terrorist' storylines would have been irrefutable."
"How badly did they screw it up if Stephen Miller, the worst person in the world™, is backtracking?" wrote Illinois talk radio host Patrick Pfingsten.
"Too late for this kind of backtracking," wrote podcaster Jayne Miller. "Stephen Miller called Alex Pretti an 'assassin' who tried to 'murder federal agents' with zero evidence to support it."
"Why did #StephenMiller declare a US citizen a terrorist?" wrote international political analyst Tara O'Connor. "Will Miller face sanction? If not why not?"
"Miller climbing down from his assertion that Alex Pretti was an assassin and is suddenly sounding like a concerned bureaucrat," wrote Pedro L. Gonzalez of Chronicles Magazine. "Because he knows he messed up. He knows that the public has turned against the administration, in large part because of him."