Stephen Miller wasn’t always on the right, and the friend who changed his mind jokes that he unleashed something, according to conservative radio host Larry Elder.
In a Townhall column on Thursday praising Miller, now Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Elder wrote that Miller described himself as a liberal as a teenager in Santa Monica. Then a close friend and classmate named Chris persuaded him to reconsider.
“I created a monster,” Chris, now a lawyer, told Elder with a laugh.
Elder wrote that the conversion didn’t stop with Miller. Miller’s parents told him they had also been liberals until their son talked them out of it.
According to Elder, Miller first reached him as a Santa Monica High School student, calling his radio show to complain that the school was ignoring a state requirement for a daily patriotic exercise like the Pledge of Allegiance. Elder said Miller went on to appear on the show 69 times, a number Miller tallied himself. Journalist Jean Guerrero, who chronicled that period in her Miller biography “Hatemonger,” told NPR that future Trump allies were among those who heard the teenager on the air.
Elder also recounted a walk through Washington with Miller when he worked for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions.
“If you could wave a magic wand and eliminate this building, that building and that building, no one would notice. There’s so much stuff going on in this town that is completely pointless,” Elder recalled Miller saying.
Elder wrote that Miller had likely been Trump’s chief of staff in practice for years. The title became official this week, when Miller replaced Susie Wiles after Republicans’ midterm losses.
Elder closed by recalling that he once borrowed a line from Oprah Winfrey to tell the teenage Miller his future looked blindingly bright.
Miller’s promotion has also drawn sharp criticism from those who see it as a sign of an even more combative White House.