Stephen Miller’s Rise From Santa Monica Liberal to White House Chief of Staff

When Stephen Miller first appeared on my radio show as a high school teenager, did I see his potential? I’ve been asked this many times.Mr. Miller, then a student at California’s Santa Monica High School, contacted my radio show with a complaint. California’s Education Code requires elementary, middle and high schools to conduct “a patriotic ritual,” like citing the Pledge of Allegiance, at the beginning of each school day. Santa Monica High was not doing this. Mr. Miller complained, without success, to his teachers, the principal and administrators.So, he called my show, cited the Education Code and talked about the value of the pledge as a way of teaching students to understand the principles upon which our “American exceptionalism” was founded. That his school was “blatantly” disregarding this “patriotic obligation,” he argued, does not bode well for the nation. He created a groundswell. People who had graduated from that high school years ago, when the pledge was cited, called the school to complain.Over the next several years, Mr. Miller appeared on my show 69 times. (He counted them.) He was passionate, funny, intense, articulate and extremely knowledgeable. He dressed like a Wall Street lawyer. He complained bitterly about his school’s use of “A People’s History of the United States” by left-wing historian Howard Zinn. “The book,” Mr. Miller said, “has given a generation a warped sense of history by focusing on America’s dark chapters, as opposed to viewing this nation as a work in progress to become a more perfect union.”Mr. MIller attended Duke University, when members of the men’s lacrosse team were accused of raping a stripper. While many at Duke pronounced the “privileged” young men guilty, Mr. Miller told my audience the charges were bogus and that the “crusading” prosecutor, who publicly pronounced them guilty, was ignoring exculpatory evidence. The charges were dropped. The prosecutor lost his job and law license and served a day in prison for withholding evidence.After Duke, Mr. Miller became a staffer for Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. At the time, I visited Mr. Miller at D.C., where we walked around and he said, “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.”Mr. Sessions, with Mr. Miller’s advice, became a loud critic of “chain migration,” the potential of limitless immigration through a succession of family memberships. In 2015, Mr. Sessions “loaned” Mr. Miller to the GOP presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Mr. Sessions never got him back.Mr. Miller has advised Mr. Trump on domestic policy, including immigration. Mr. Miller’s influence is such that he has long likely been Mr. Trump’s chief of staff in all but name. Now it’s official.After Mr. Miller’s first few appearances on my show, he and I became friends. I met Mr. Miller’s close friend and classmate, Chris, who convinced Mr. Miller, then a self-described liberal — like virtually everyone in Santa Monica — to re-think his assumptions. Chris, now a lawyer, laughingly told me, “I created a monster.”Mr. Miller’s parents told me they, too, were once liberals before their son convinced them they were not. Mr. Miller’s father called me his son’s “mentor.” I said, “If you mean politics, that title goes to Chris. But thank you.”Mr. Miller invited me to speak at his high school, but “negotiations” dragged on for months. The school administration insisted that another speaker must later be invited “to provide balance.”On the day of my speech, Mr. Miller and I met with the principal. I told her the school permitted a left-wing union leader to speak earlier this semester. “Did you follow up her speech,” I asked, “with a conservative speaker ‘to provide balance’?”The principal squirmed before reluctantly admitting that, well, no, she did not. Mr. Miller was delighted. “That was beautiful. You nailed her!” he said after we left her office. “This bias has got to stop. It’s hurting the country.”Mr. Miller saw a career in politics, but not as a politician. He wanted to influence policy, to make sure Americans understand that our republic is not guaranteed.Did I see that he would become the chief of staff to a president of the United States? No, not quite.Yet when this effervescent high school student asked me where I thought he would go in life, I said, “Stephen, to borrow a quote from Oprah Winfrey, your future is so bright it blinds my eyes.”Creators.com

Stephen Miller’s Rise From Santa Monica Liberal to White House Chief of Staff

Stephen Miller’s Rise From Santa Monica Liberal to White House Chief of Staff

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