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All posts tagged "stephen miller"

'Completely mental': Stephen Miller skewered online over 'whining' rant on spy powers

Stephen Miller tried crying foul about a proposed check on the United States power to spy on Americans, only to be brutally mocked and fact-checked online.

Congressional lawmakers have been suggesting a requirement for federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to seek approval to spy on Americans from judges from a court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Miller didn't like the idea, writing on X that, "A libertarian demand to make SecWar get approval from liberal DC judges (the ones who targeted Trump) is madness," and called spying on foreign soil "the core of all US security."

He added, "No conservative aim is ever served through subservience to leftist DC judges."

"Completely Mental that 'the core of all US security' is 'surveillance on foreign soil,'" shot back writer Curtis Yarvin. "No wonder all the asylum seekers come here. Other places do have a few small asylums but here it's the whole country."

Josh Gerstein, the senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, pointed out that "FISA judges come across the country," defeating Miller's claims that the Defense Secretary would have to deal with "DC judges."

"Two of the 11 are based in DC," Gerstein wrote, adding a link to the list of judges.

Former congressman Justin Amash wrote that, under FISA, "the government collects massive amounts of data on Americans while 'targeting' foreigners overseas," in a post.

"They then unconstitutionally search that data without a warrant for info on Americans," Amash continued. "The 'libertarian demand' he's whining about is called the Fourth Amendment."

Vance trying to recapture MAGA's attention as Trump grows impatient with him: analysis

Vice President JD Vance and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have zeroed in on fraud, but an analyst on Friday revealed what has motivated the move.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte pointed out how, as President Donald Trump has become more "impatient" with Vance, the vice president has pivoted to the "tough guy act" with Miller, looking to capture MAGA's attention using accusations that immigrants are scamming the United States "on a scale that, if true, would rate as one of the worst corruption scandals in history."

"Vance, along with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, are similarly embracing the view that law, morality and ethics should not get in the way of their radical political agenda," Marcotte wrote.

The two men have created a "task force" to look into the alleged fraud and "false claims," but it was mostly a "press stunt," Marcotte explained.

And although there is a real problem around fraud in health and welfare spending, Marcotte described how it's unlikely the White House has deep concern for the issue. But for Vance and Miller, that's not exactly the point — it's a way to reach right-wing circles and MAGA voters.

"And while Vance and Miller speak in vague terms, they’re relying on popular MAGA propagandist Nick Shirley to fill the [SIC] in the immigrant-baiting gaps for their audience," Marcotte wrote.

"It’s all to spin a larger, false narrative of evil immigrants overrunning blue states, aided by daft Democratic leaders too dazzled by wokeness to recognize the alleged truth that only racists will admit: Immigrants are out to prey on white Americans," Marcotte wrote. "But as anyone familiar with MAGA social media knows, the truth doesn’t really matter. Any content alleging 'fraud,' especially if a non-white face can be forefronted in the images, quickly goes viral in right-wing circles."

"The right’s war on immigrants is about racism and bigotry. But it’s also a pathetic bid for power from Vance and Miller, who both seem to see the immigration issue as a way to keep the MAGA gravy train going after Trump," Marcotte wrote. "But they are likely to be mistaken."

For the two men eyeing political life after Trump, it's the next step.

"The right’s fixation on immigrant fraud is a real Russian nesting doll of lies," Marcotte wrote. "If Vance and Miller were actual stewards of the public trust, they wouldn’t work for Trump."

Hunter Biden rages at Jake Tapper and 'ugly' Stephen Miller in posting spree

Hunter Biden started posting on X last month for the first time and has unleashed his thoughts on CNN anchor Jake Tapper, MAGA, and now one of President Donald Trump's closest advisors — Stephen Miller.

On Thursday, Biden took issue with one of Trump's longest-running insiders and White House chief of staff in a blunt comment in response to a user named Case on X, who said, "gonna need Hunter Biden to also call Stephen Miller an ugly f---."

"Stephen Miller is an ugly f---," Biden said in a cheeky response.

During the last 24 hours, Biden has raged against Tapper, whom he has referred to as the character "Brick Tamland" from the 2004 comedy "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," in response to the journalist's comments about his step-mother, Dr. Jill Biden. She has been promoting her memoir about her life and experiences as first lady with her husband, former President Joe Biden.

"So let me get this straight," Biden wrote. "Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: 'But what about your paintings, Hunter?' Please."

Earlier on Thursday, Biden, who is an artist, author and recovery advocate, fired off more of his thoughts.

"WTF timeline are we on? Someone called me the MAGA whisperer, and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R, we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats, they get fat and rich off of our misery. The second we figure out we agree on more than we disagree, they’re done. Love your neighbor. Be yourself. Radical honesty. No f---- given, no f---- taken. Everything else is just noise. (But still f--- Jake 'Brick Tamland' Tapper on any timeline)," Biden said.

Stephen Miller dealt 'hard punch in the mouth' by uncensored Dems: Ex-GOP operative

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson described how a social post knocked down one of President Donald Trump's longest and closest advisers — and sent MAGA into a rage this week.

The co-founder of the anti-Trump group, The Lincoln Project, revealed in a Substack post Thursday that, after Miller delivered a bigoted attack on Democratic Texas Senate hopeful Rep. James Talarico, the Democrats swung back.

The moment stung for Trump's MAGA coalition — and Miller — becoming a "hard punch in the mouth that that soft-handed sadist Stephen Miller has obviously needed since middle school."

"The official Democratic Party account looked at Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, the architect of ICE thugs murdering American citizens in our streets, the Grima Wormtongue of the Trump White House immigration policy, the majordomo of white nat modern apartheid fantasies, and told him, in five tidy words: 'shut up, you ugly ----,'" Wilson wrote.

"That’s it. That’s the tweet. Five words. No policy. No nuance. No 14-part thread with a land acknowledgment quote bolted onto the front, nothing soft or nurturing or politically correct," Wilson wrote.

He called the Democrat's clapback moment "the sight of a man who built an entire political religion around the public performance of cruelty to others discovering through the glorious avenue of social media that cruelty has a return address."

"And reader, I want you to enjoy the rich, full-bodied irony of what happened next, because it is a clarifying moment in American politics, one on par with the invention of the hot mic," Wilson added. "Stephen Miller’s feelings got hurt."

Miller might be used to just firing off insults or brutal comments, Wilson said, but this time it was different.

"For once, the Democrats brought a gun to the gunfight," Wilson wrote.

Experts skewer Stephen Miller's 'wildly false' new claim: 'He thinks Americans are idiots'

Stephen Miller claimed this week that the federal budget could be balanced simply by cutting payments to ineligible recipients — and experts, economists, and legal analysts wasted no time calling it out as fantasy.

"Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them," Miller said.

The response was swift and brutal.

New York Times columnist David French called it "wildly false" and warned it "breeds a dangerous level of ignorance and wishful thinking in the American public."

Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick was more blunt: "Stephen Miller thinks Americans are idiots. That's the only explanation for this kind of contemptuous lie."

The numbers don't come close to supporting Miller's claim. Trump's own Office of Management and Budget calculated that all potentially erroneous individual payments totaled $186 billion in 2025 — about 10 percent of the current budget deficit, according to budget analyst Jessica Riedl. The deficit itself runs nearly $2 trillion.

"'Based on what I've heard' means 'according to my baseless fantasies,'" wrote financial journalist James Surowiecki. "The claim that there's $1.8 trillion in fraudulent payments is the same kind of delusion that explains why DOGE was such a failure."

Reason magazine's Billy Binion put it simply: "We will never balance the budget if powerful people keep peddling wild falsehoods like this."

Observers roast Stephen Miller's 'nonsense' about food stamps: 'Lies so easily'

Online commentators are tearing into White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's latest comments on welfare and food stamps as an obvious lie.

"The way most welfare works in most states and most places is we take your word for it," Miller said on Thursday. "If you file a piece of paper, and you say your kids are hungry, you are going to get food stamps. We don't check."

The reactions called out Miller's explanation of welfare and food stamps. Journalist Jamie Satterfield described it as a "bald faced lie" in a post on X.

"You can't walk into a government agency and walk out with food stamps by simply saying your kids are hungry," Satterfield wrote. "It should be that way, but it's not. And if Miller doesn't know that, he shouldn't be spewing this nonsense."

"Not a single word of this is true," wrote Capitol Hill journalist Julian Andreone.

Writer Jared Ryan Sears summed up Miller's comments as "ridiculous" in his reaction.

"Every government program requires extensive amount of documentation to get anything," Sears wrote. "All this administration does is lie, and somehow millions of Americans continue to believe them."

"He lies so easily, doesn't he?" asked tennis icon turned commentator Martina Navratilova.

Missouri Democratic congressional candidate Fred Wellman also called Miller's comments a "bald-faced lie" in his post.

"These programs don't just hand out money. They hate people that struggle," Wellman wrote. "They hate people who aren't rich."



Far-right rebels against Stephen Miller after his latest stunt

Trump aide Stephen Miller went on X this week to torch Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky for voting against President Donald Trump's signature border bill, but the video drew a reaction Miller almost certainly didn't see coming. Some of the loudest voices in the far-right corner of the MAGA movement turned the attack right back on him.

In the clip, Miller wore a red MAGA hat and stared into the camera as he accused Massie of having "betrayed America, betrayed you, and betrayed your children." He claimed the Kentucky lawmaker "sided with every House Democrat, every Senate Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer" by opposing what Miller described as Trump's signature border security and immigration enforcement legislation.

"Tom Massie voted to kill the bill," Miller said in the video. "Tom Massie sided with the House and Senate Democrats over the sovereignty of this republic."

The reaction from the online right was brutal.

White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes accused Miller of using his immigration messaging as cover for something else.

"You have utterly and completely failed to deliver mass deportations or a border wall, but you were the biggest cheerleader for the war with Iran," Fuentes wrote. "You are hiding behind your MAGA hat and immigration while you advance the interests of Israel because you are a Zionist Jew."

Daniel McAdams, a longtime associate of former ex-Rep. Ron Paul, piled on with a single line.

"You misspelled 'Israel,'" McAdams wrote.

Pro-white-nationalist account Hunter Wallace, posting under the handle @LutherEnjoyer, ran through a list of grievances.

"The 'Based Jew' delivered $5 a gallon gas, 6% inflation and a war with Iran for Israel, but couldn't deliver 'mass deportations' even with ICE being given $75 billion dollars," Wallace wrote.

Democratic commentator Adam Mockler took a different kind of swing at the staffer.

"Is that a dent in his hat or his actual head?" Mockler wrote.

Stephen Miller using ‘less visible’ immigration strategies after backlash: analyst

Stephen Miller's aggressive immigration policy has led to disastrous outcomes and criticism, forcing him to change course, an analyst explained on Tuesday.

The White House deputy chief of staff has had to develop a new strategy for the Trump administration's immigration policy, according to a new New York Times report and video featuring White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs.

Miller's different approach involves zeroing in on social services fraud and placing less emphasis on deportation raids. He recently joined Vice President JD Vance at a White House event on the anti-fraud task force centered on the administration's crackdown on immigrants who were abusing benefits and allegedly committing fraud, Kanno-Youngs reported.

"The people at this table are all united in absolute determination to stop this plague of fraud, criminality and abuse," Miller said at the event.

This move has been on Miller's mind all along, Kanno-Youngs explained.

"Miller has long tried to establish a link between immigrants and fraud, but there was a legitimate case of fraud in Minnesota that presented an ideal opportunity to ramp up these attacks," Kanno-Youngs said.

"However, the anti-fraud task force is also just one piece of a much broader effort that Stephen Miller is pursuing to make the lives of immigrants without legal status so uncomfortable that they end up leaving the country voluntarily," Kanno-Youngs explained. "This shift is largely the result of the political backlash that the administration faced after the deportation raids in Minneapolis. Stephen Miller is now focused on advancing policies that can target how immigrants access public housing."

Miller has also started questioning how immigrants use credit cards and has started working with different state officials, including Tennessee, to try and limit how immigrants access hospitals and social service agencies. In Texas, he's been asking how children of immigrants access public schools.

"These less visible policies are incredibly impactful," Kanno-Youngs added.

Trump's midterm 'panic' threatens to spell the end for Stephen Miller: analyst

Donald Trump could make a major administration change ahead of the midterms to ease voter woes, an analyst has claimed.

Stephen Miller's hard line on immigration policy is considered unsettling for voters, according to an internal document seen by The Wall Street Journal and noted by analyst Greg Sargent. The New Republic columnist suggested the president may have been swayed by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to soften the admin's stance.

Sargent believes Trump is set to throw Miller "under the bus" as a result.

Sargent wrote, "Trump wants to 'lower the profile of his mass deportation effort,' the Journal reveals. He wants voters to think the targets of these deportations are 'bad guys,' not noncriminal undocumented residents.

"He wants less visibility for ICE raids in cities, fewer public confrontations with local officials, and less public talk about “mass deportations,” which, he now grasps, are hideously unpopular.

"Tellingly, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles now sees deportations as a liability for the midterms, per the report," Sargent wrote. "That Trump is siding with her on the politics here is a sign of political panic and a rebuke to Miller, who apparently delights in flaunting the administration’s vicious sadism and overt white nationalism — and seems certain that latent majorities are quietly cheering along.

"To be clear, this report deserves serious skepticism. It very much bears watching whether ICE will actually end up deprioritizing the removal of noncriminal immigrants. Trump mostly wants the appearance of a pivot: According to the Journal, he wants a focus on 'criminals' in GOP 'messaging.'"

Whether Trump removes Miller from his position is yet to be seen, but Sargent suggests that, until the president does so, it will be hard to soften immigration policy.

He wrote: "Trump can dress this up with spin about targeting 'criminals' all he likes. But until all the ethnonationalist, civilizational-emergency-mongering nonsense is exorcised, the deeper problem will fester.

"Trump believes all those ideas himself, but the depth of his commitment to them has never been all that clear. One doubts he’ll be so inclined, but should he ever want to end this madness, only one move on his part—a big personnel move—can truly put an end to it."

Trump's 'macho' monsters just revealed what they really are

Across Iran and the Caribbean, Donald Trump and his lickspittles delight in killing as if people were expendable scenery, not human beings with loved ones and families. Meanwhile, they ignore the death and destruction their fellow psychopath, Vladimir Putin, rains down on Ukraine every night.

India and America invite Iran to send an UNARMED ship to the Indian Ocean to participate in military exercises, and Trump and Whiskey Pete decided it would be fun to blow it out of the water, leaving more than 100 sailors miles from shore, desperate for a rescue. Instead of saving them, as international law requires, we simply left them to drown.

Whiskey Pete called it “quiet death.” In fact, there was a lot of screaming and sobbing, although the bombers couldn’t hear it from 20,000 feet any more than Hegseth could in his drunken haze.

Just like they blew up a boat in the Caribbean and then, when two fishermen survived clinging to a piece of debris and were desperately waving for help, came back with an illegally unmarked plane and blew them into bits of blood and gristle. Another clear violation of international and American law.

And then they bombed a girl’s school in Iran, killing at least 160 children, and then lied about it while also humble-bragging that “people will die” in their war of choice. As Stephen “Nosferatu” Miller gleefully announced after the little girls were slaughtered:

“What you’re seeing right now … is a military under President Trump’s leadership that is not fighting politically correct. That isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.”

And Hegseth bragged:

“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically-correct wars.”

When he was asked about the six American soldiers who were killed because Putin is helping Iran target Americans in the region, his reply was disgusting:

“When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad.”

These are the ghouls who were delighted — thrilled — when masked ICE thugs in Minneapolis shot Renee Good in the face and Alex Pretti in the back. They then went on TV, giddy, and smeared them to the world. And killed dozens of people so far this year in their concentration camps while delighting in tearing children from their parents.

Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 who’s gleefully overseen the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, shattering their lives and families while throwing the American government into crisis, apparently gets off on thinking of them crying themselves to sleep at night, worrying about getting thrown out on the street with their children because they can’t pay rent:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”

Yeah, trauma. It’s what today’s Republicans love, so long as it happens to other people. It’s their drug of choice.

Vought’s and Musk’s massive cuts to the federal workforce to pay for tax cuts for billionaires — in this case, laying off thousands from the National Weather Service — meant that families in Michigan had virtually no warning that tornadoes were bearing down on them this past weekend. Three people are now dead and a dozen more in the hospital clinging to life.

Of course they weren’t billionaires, so their lives don’t much matter, right? Like the millions who lost their health insurance when the Big Beautiful Bill redirected ACA subsidies and Medicaid revenue to tax cuts for the morbidly rich. Or the pregnant women across red states who are dying at more than twice the rate of women in blue states because of misogynistic GOP anti-abortion laws.

Trump, Hegseth, Vance, Miller, Leavitt, et al think this sort of thing makes them seem “macho” and “tough.” Nearly 90 percent of Republican voters agree with them.

What it really does is reveal them as psychopaths, the very human embodiment of evil. If they’d been born in a different time or place, they’d be Ted Bundys or Charles Mansons and their GOP followers would be “good Germans” watching with a smile and a salute as the boxcars roll by.

When those six U.S. service members were killed by Iranian retaliation, Trump refused to remove his $50 souvenir hat (available for sale on his website) or bow his head and shrugged, saying that “sadly, there will likely be more … That’s the way it is.”

Those soldiers are just suckers and losers, after all; they should have had the good sense of the Trump men to complain about bone spurs or simply flee the country to avoid the draft, like Grandpa Drumpf did when Germany kicked him out for refusing to serve.

“War Secretary” Hegseth — with his Crusader cross and Dius Vult slogan tattoos — brags that they’ve “only just begun” putting “narco‑terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,” with no interest in who is actually on board the boats they’re striking. After all, they’re not white people and they’re not rich.

This isn’t the language of leaders reluctantly using force as a last resort; it’s the rhetoric of psychopaths who see the rest of humanity as disposable, as dots in a video game, as objects whose death is entertainment, so long as their own luxury and power are secure.

Elon Musk throws a quarter-billion dollars into the 2024 election to put Trump in the White House and in turn is given an opportunity to kill over a million Black and brown children on the other side of the planet by gutting USAID. As Bill Gates noted, it was “the richest man in the world killing the poorest children.”

When a college Republican chat room devolved into a Nazi-loving, Black- and Hispanic-loathing festival of hate, conspiracy theories, and Hitler adoration last week it was just another Thursday. Like Musk giving the Nazi salute — twice — at a Trump rally.

My dad’s Republican Party — Eisenhower’s and Romney’s and McCain’s Republican Party — is long dead and gone, and in its place is a cult built on grievance, paranoia, white supremacy, and a love for authoritarian strongmen including Putin and Orbán.

They delight in death and destruction. They love the language of blood and gore. They’re monsters.