July 21, 2019

White House Adviser Stephen Miller Endorses Questioning Citizens About Their National Origin

The administration’s immigration policy architect explains his very own vision of a “colorblind society.”

Alex Wong/Getty

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President Donald Trump’s racist attacks against four progressive congresswomen have produced days of head-scratching defenses from his closest allies, but the most bizarre attempt to back the president may have just come this morning from senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller.

“I fundamentally disagree with the view that if you criticize someone and they happen to be a different color skin that that makes it a racial criticism,” Miller told journalist Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “If you want to have a colorblind society, it means you can criticize immigration policy, you can criticize people’s views, you can ask questions about where they’re born and not have it be seen as racial.” 

 

“And can you also say ‘go back’ where you came from?” Wallace asked Miller, referencing a racist chant deployed by Trump’s supporters to target Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at a rally in North Carolina last week.

“The president was clear that he disagreed,” Miller said, attempting to distance Trump from the chant before immediately offering an olive branch to the chanters. “All the people in that audience and millions of patriotic Americans all across this country are tired of being beat up, condescended to, looked down upon, talked down to by members of Congress on the left in Washington, DC, and their allies in many corners of the media,'” Miller claimed.

Trump has said he was “not happy” with the chants, but, as Wallace pointed out, still let them proceed for 13 seconds without interruption and, in the days since, has kept up attacks targeting Omar along with three of her congressional allies, all of whom are women of color. On Sunday, Trump lashed out at them in another angry tweet.

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