Lovett or Leave It

This F*cking Guy | Stephen Miller: Everything You Didn't Know About His Sh*tty Past

32 min
Oct 4, 20257 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

This episode of 'This Fucking Guy' examines Stephen Miller's political trajectory from a conservative-leaning Santa Monica teenager to a key architect of Trump administration immigration policies. The hosts detail Miller's radicalization through anti-immigrant rhetoric, his role in implementing the Muslim ban and family separation policies, and his current position as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the incoming Trump administration.

Insights
  • Miller's political extremism was cultivated through mentorship by established conservative figures (David Horowitz, Steve Bannon) who explicitly taught him to weaponize fear and demonize political opponents as core political strategy
  • Miller's lack of electoral experience or traditional political credentials enabled him to operate with minimal oversight by positioning himself in ambiguous White House roles, allowing him to implement radical policies without Senate confirmation
  • The normalization of white nationalist rhetoric in mainstream conservative media occurred through strategic language laundering—reframing white supremacist ideas as 'heritage,' 'economics,' and 'national security' concerns
  • Miller's personal unpopularity and social isolation throughout his life appears to have reinforced rather than moderated his extremist views, suggesting that social rejection may have accelerated radicalization rather than prevented it
  • The incoming Trump administration's immigration agenda represents a more operationalized and concrete threat than the first term, with Miller now positioned to execute specific policies (internment camps, mass deportations, military deployment) without requiring Senate approval
Trends
White nationalist rhetoric increasingly laundered through mainstream conservative policy language focusing on border security and national sovereigntyErosion of institutional checks on executive power through strategic use of positions that bypass Senate confirmation requirementsRadicalization pipeline from talk radio and online white nationalist media to mainstream political influence within major party administrationsStrategic deployment of culture war grievances (reverse discrimination claims, attacks on DEI initiatives) as political organizing tools by far-right operativesNormalization of explicitly authoritarian immigration policies (military deployment, mass internment, forced deportations) within mainstream Republican policy platformsRole of personal resentment and social rejection in driving political extremism and willingness to implement harmful policiesInstitutional capture strategy: placing ideologically committed operatives in positions with minimal oversight to maximize policy impactCoordination between white nationalist media outlets (American Renaissance, V-Dare) and mainstream conservative political figures to amplify extremist narratives
Topics
Immigration policy and border enforcementMuslim ban and travel restrictionsFamily separation policy at US-Mexico borderDACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) cancellationWhite nationalist ideology in mainstream politicsTrump administration personnel and policy influenceSenate confirmation bypass through ambiguous White House positionsRadicalization through conservative media (talk radio, Breitbart)Title 42 and remain-in-Mexico immigration policiesMilitary deployment to southern borderMass deportation planning and executionInstitutional resistance to extremist policies within government agencies2020 election denial and Save America PACAmerica First Legal organization and anti-DEI litigationWhite supremacist media ecosystem and mainstream political coordination
Companies
Breitbart
Miller sent 900+ emails to Breitbart editors directing coverage of immigrant crime and promoting white supremacist co...
Federation for American Immigration Reform
Far-right think tank founded by eugenicist John Tanton whose immigration policies Miller proposed verbatim in Trump a...
Southern Poverty Law Center
Civil rights nonprofit that exposed 900+ emails revealing Miller's white supremacist media consumption and coordination
American Renaissance
White nationalist publication promoted by Miller in emails and introduced to him by David Horowitz during his teenage...
V-Dare
White nationalist website promoted by Miller in emails and recommended to him as a teenager by David Horowitz
Trump National Hotel
Venue where Stephen Miller and Katie Waldman were married in February 2020; subsequently shut down
Department of Homeland Security
Agency where Miller inserted himself into policymaking so extensively that DHS officials held classified meetings to ...
America First Legal
Organization founded by Miller to fight policies promoting inclusion of women, minorities, and LGBTQ people
Save America PAC
Political action committee that paid Miller and proliferated false claims about the 2020 election being stolen
National Republican Senatorial Committee
Organization where Katie Waldman worked before joining Department of Homeland Security
People
Stephen Miller
Subject of episode; architect of Muslim ban, family separation policy, and incoming administration's mass deportation...
David Horowitz
Introduced teenage Miller to white nationalist media and taught him that fear is more politically compelling than hope
Steve Bannon
One of two men who shaped Miller's political trajectory through mentorship during his teenage years
Jeff Sessions
Miller's boss in Senate; worked with Miller to kill 2013 bipartisan immigration reform bill
Donald Trump
Miller's primary political patron; appointed him Deputy Chief of Staff; easily influenced by last person he spoke to
Katie Waldman
Miller's wife; worked at DHS and played role in family separation policy; married Miller at Trump National Hotel
Larry Elder
Mentored teenage Miller; invited him on show 69 times, amplifying his early racist rhetoric
Michelle Bachmann
Miller's first Capitol Hill employer as her press secretary through David Horowitz's connection
Richard Spencer
Met Miller at Duke; both members of Duke conservative union; Spencer later insisted Miller was white nationalist
Mike Pence
Katie Waldman worked as his press secretary; had contentious relationship with Trump post-election
Jim Acosta
Questioned Miller about immigration policy; Miller responded defensively to accusations of racism
Jean Guerrero
Wrote 2020 book 'Hate Monger' documenting Miller's radicalization and white nationalist connections
John Tanton
Founded Federation for American Immigration Reform whose policies Miller adopted verbatim in Trump administration
Aaron Ryan
Co-host of 'This Fucking Guy' episode analyzing Stephen Miller
Julia Claire
Co-host of 'This Fucking Guy' episode; previously wrote three-part series on Donald Trump
Quotes
"Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash? We have plenty of janitors."
Stephen Miller (high school student government campaign speech, 2017)High school era
"I think the ideal solution would be to cut off their fingers. I don't think it's necessary to kill them entirely. We're not a barbaric people. We respect life. Therefore torture is the way to go."
Stephen Miller (age 17)Post-9/11 high school era
"You can't be this passionate about the immigration issue and not have a sense of the American nation as it historically emerged."
Richard Spencer (on Stephen Miller)Post-college era
"The simple part is seal the border, deport all the illegals. In terms of the policy sets to accomplish this, you have your safe third agreements you have remain in Mexico, finish the wall, you re-implement title 42, and then you also deploy the military to the southern border."
Stephen MillerPre-2024 election
"Who's going to stand up and say the cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone, America is for Americans and Americans only."
Stephen Miller (Madison Square Garden rally)2024 campaign
Full Transcript
Hey guys, Love It here. The Love It or Leave It team is off this week. I'm taking them down to Huntington Beach so they can run around, catch a Frisbee in their mouths, get their zoomies out, bark at the jellyfish, you know, producer stuff. But we didn't want to leave you in the lurch, so I hope you enjoy this episode of Crooked's hit series, This Fucking Guy. In each episode, the hosts of Asteria, Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonico select one distinguished gentleman currently making America less awesome and gets you up to speed on all of his low down dirty dealings with jokes and deep research that can only be described as a public service. Alyssa and Aaron help us understand the path these creeps took to power and in so doing help us understand how we, all of us ended up in our current predicament. This week's show focuses on none other than C plus Santa Monica fascist Stephen Miller and boys at a doozy. So check out this episode and please subscribe for video versions of This Fucking Guy on Asteria's YouTube channel or by searching This Fucking Guy on YouTube or Spotify. You can also subscribe to Asteria wherever you get your podcast here. Audio versions of the show now twice a month because let's face it, it's 2025 and there are a lot of fucking guys. Welcome to another episode of This Fucking Guy, the show where we choose one fucking guy making America worse and explore the reasons they suck. I'm Aaron Ryan, host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast. And this time I'm delighted to be joined by Crooked Media's Julia Claire, co-writer of This Fucking Guy, who many of you will remember from our three part series on Donald Trump. Hi, Julia. Hi, Aaron. Thank you so much. I am a glutton for punishment. This episode's subject is one that, as you can see, many of you have been clamoring for much in the way that a mob of angry townsfolk would clamor for Dracula to emerge from his castle after he kidnapped and exsanguinated one too many of the town's preteens. We'll put down those pitchforks because we're bringing out that Magnus Ferratu this month, Stephen Miller, a man who has never won an election in his life and has the charisma of a toilet rat, but nevertheless has been forced on us like male Instacart shoppers or Adam Levine. The sight of him evokes the feeling of opening up the kitchen trash the day after somebody cleaned out the fridge like a giant broccoli farted in the pit. Face so punchable that he's not allowed to attend boxing matches lest he distract the fighters. Like many subjects of This Fucking Guy, Miller is a Trump gadfly, but unlike many previous subjects, Miller seems to actually believe what he's saying, or at least he wants us to believe that he believes what he's saying because as he's alluded to in at least one interview, triggering the libs with his bad opinions is the only thing that gives his life meaning. But I cannot stress enough that despite the fact that he tries very hard to shock people, the overall effect is tiresome. The story of Stephen Miller is one of an unremarkable man, not good looking, medium smart, sexually repellent, not funny, who like many others in Washington wants to be interesting. And since he can't embody any of those other superlatives, he's chosen to be the most obnoxious. Like Shakespeare's Iago, Miller's motivations are opaque. Are there lessons to be learned from his Hitler light histrionics? I'm actually not sure. Miller seems like somebody who had every chance in life to turn out good, or at least normal, but just came out weird. A defective dickhead on the conveyor belt of human souls. Okay. So without further ado, let's talk about Stephen Wilhelmina Miller. Wait, is that his middle name? No, but wouldn't it be funny if it was? Okay, moving on. Stephen Miller was born or summoned from the underworld on August 23rd, 1985. He grew up in Santa Monica, California in a not particularly political Jewish family. That's right. But little Stephen officially came out as a conservative in middle school when he began subscribing to Guns N' Ammo magazine, the official magazine for feeling bad about your dick. God already laying the groundwork as an enormous loser. A middle schooler interested in guns and ammo. Certainly no red flags there. Also a preteen from Santa Monica getting really into guns as if he would ever have caused to use one is a particular kind of cowboy cosplay that in America more commonly leads suburbanites to buy enormous pickup trucks. We know you're just using that truck for Starbucks runs, Carl. Anyways, the young Miller was then fully radicalized after reading the former CEO of the NRA's manifesto titled Guns, Crimes and Freedom, which stridely argued that America was under attack from outsiders. A lot of you might be thinking that these political attitudes sit in stark contrast with the modern day California of our collective understanding. But as journalist Jean Guerrero wrote in her 2020 book, Hate Monger, Stephen Miller came of age in the 90s when California was a hotbed of anti-immigrant sentiment. Always a good reminder not to become such an absolute ghoul that a journalist one day writes a book about you called Hate Monger. Oh my God. California in the 90s was under the governorship of Republican Pete Wilson, who repeatedly railed against what he called, quote, an invasion at the border and blamed all of California's fiscal problems on immigrants. Sound familiar? After beginning to marinate in this ferociously anti-immigrant rhetoric, Stephen Miller called up one of his few pals at school, Jason Eastluss. And informed him that they could no longer be friends because Jason's family was Latino. Not a particularly wise decision considering that Miller was already cultivating his signature table for one vibes. One classmate recalls that even in a school where nerds were considered cool, he was still the guy that nobody liked. Ouch. Sounds like a great example of how sometimes bullying can work too well, creating bullying resistant super assholes in much the same way that overprescribing can lead to antibiotic resistant superbacteria. He seems to really delight in being a heel and decided to double down on his villain persona in place of developing an actual personality. In 2017, a video of Miller's high school student government campaign speech emerged in which he argued that students shouldn't pick up their own trash because janitors exist. Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash? We have plenty of janitors. That video perfectly encapsulates his bratty little prince. I know. He's just like, he's just such a brat. His classmates quickly booed him off stage, saying truly horrible things without apology was again, something Miller seemed to really enjoy. After 9-11, Miller took to his high school newspaper column and penned an article called quote, a time to kill in which he urged a violent response against radical Islamists, a catch all category into which Miller appeared to suggest that most Muslims fell and accused his classmates and administrator of inadequate patriotism. Sorry, but Santa Monica High School, this one's on you for letting a minor publish an article called a time to kill, which is already the title of another thing that was very popular. Hack behavior. Here's another clip of 17 year old Miller joking about torturing Iraqis. Cool. But Astro Salad must say in this henchmen, I think the ideal solution would be to cut off their fingers. I don't think it's necessary to kill them entirely. We're not a barbaric people. We respect life. Therefore torture is the way to go. Because torture, people can live. Torture is a celebration of life and human dignity. Something so pussy about a guy being like, get him, boys. Yeah, get him. Get him, boys. That's his whole, that's his whole tough guy vibe. Seize him. At least he showed a sliver of self-awareness here. But something just not going right. My hair is just receding. I look like I'm 35. True. Absolutely. I agree with Steven. The match. Yep. Yeah. You know, you got a hand at home there. He, he does. He does. Describing him as dead behind the eyes doesn't really do it justice. Miller's eyes are deader than anybody's eyes have ever been. Miller kept falling deeper down the alt-right rabbit hole. Teenage Steven Miller became a pious adherent of conservative talk radio listening to Rush Limbaugh and local host Larry Elder. Miller began calling into Elder's show to rail against the administration at Santa Monica High School, who Miller complained were too tolerant of his Spanish speaking classmates and too enthusiastic about multiculturalism. Elder was so impressed by Miller's, I don't know, articulate racism that he even began regularly inviting him on the show as a guest. It's the only way that Larry Elder could get a young person to talk to him. In all, he appeared on Elder's show as a guest 69 times, which nice. Swish. But second, given what we know about Steven, it makes sense that all of that attention, both positive and negative, went right to young Steven's shriveled little prefrontal cortex and encouraged him to press onward in his pursuit of right wing stardom. It was on the Larry Elder show that teenage Steven Miller caught the attention of two men who would go on to shape the nightmare we know him to be today, Steve Bannon and David Horowitz. Now we all know Steve Bannon. David Horowitz was a member of the New Left in the 1960s before pivoting to arch-conservativism and wetting his white nationalist curiosity. He took Steven Miller under his wing and taught him that hope and fear are the two greatest weapons in politics, but fear is more compelling. Horowitz eventually fed a strategy paper to Miller describing the need for the Republican Party to remake itself around the demonization of its political opponents and appeals to Americans based instincts. Hey, that's the exact plot of Wicket. Oh. Well, congratulations, David. Some 20 years later, we can definitely say the Republican Party is doing exactly what you wanted and America is so, so much worse for it. According to Gene Guerrero's reporting, Horowitz also introduced the teenage Miller to even more explicitly white nationalist media, including websites like American Renaissance and V-Dare, both of which sound like gay hookup apps for college libertarians. After high school, Steven took his hateful little spirit across the country to Duke University, the Harvard of assholes, where he again wrote regular screeds in the school newspaper in a bi-weekly column called Miller Time. The column was full of what you would expect from Miller by now, both because it was already the title for something else. And because both Miller brand beer and Miller's writing leave the consumer with a distinct piss aftertaste. In one article, Miller argued that laws requiring pay equity for men and women would hurt businesses and that the pay gap was mostly women's fault for not asking for raises, which again, not original. I just can't get over what a fun hang he must have been on the quad. One of his classmates, who was also an editor on the Duke Chronicles set of Miller, quote, I cannot remember a single person who was his friend, nor can anyone I know. Yes. Again, that sounds right. Miller first entered the national spotlight during his senior year at Duke when three captains of the school's lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a woman they hired as a stripper at one of their parties. The case became a national lightning rod as the three players in question were white and their accuser was black. Stephen Miller distinguished himself with an immediate willingness to believe that the white players were innocent before any details about the case were known. To horrified reactions from fellow students and faculty, he showcased that he was predominantly concerned not that a woman might have been raped, but that young white men might have been wrongly accused. It's now all but the standard response to any accusations of sexual misconduct from the right. Miller devoted more of his school newspaper column to the case than any other topic. For this, he was invited to be a talking head on CNN, as well as two of Fox News's most popular shows, respectively hosted by Bill O'Reilly and Nancy Grace. Well, you have a situation here where like a lot of college campuses, you have this segment of professors that's very powerful and very, very far to the left. And for the first time, a lot of students and in a way, the American public at large saw the depths and the ferocity of that radicalism. Despite the fact that the case fell apart within six months, all charges were dropped. The district attorney was disbarred and each player received upwards of 20 million dollars in settlements from both Duke and the city of Durham. The Duke-Locrosse case is still invoked by American right-wingers 20 years later. I'm not saying what happened to those three players wasn't traumatic. It clearly was. But from modern conservative rhetoric, you would think that they received the same unimaginable cruelty as the five black teenagers, wrongly accused of rape in 1989, who became known as the Central Park Five, now the Exonerated Five. You know, the ones Donald Trump called to be executed by the state who were forced to spend their entire young adulthood's mind bars. Yeah, and any false accusation of a crime as serious as sexual assault is awful. But the fact that the right-wing media doesn't seem to make a peep when the accused aren't privileged white boys tells me that the issue they really care about is injustice, it's something else. And Stephen Miller was a dutiful messenger of that something else. The Lacrosse case catapulted another young conservative firebrand who also happened to be a graduate student at Duke into the national spotlight. His name was Richard Spencer. Spencer and Miller met through the Duke conservative union, of which they were both members and likely bonded over their love of, I don't know, whiteness, probably in later years, while trying to increase his national profile, Miller would attempt to distance himself from Spencer and pretend that he was not also a white nationalist as Spencer self identified. But it was just never particularly convincing. Richard Spencer also insisted Miller was not a white nationalist, but he said, you can't be this passionate about the immigration issue and not have a sense of the American nation as it historically emerged. Julia, can you translate that? Sure. That is a white nationalist grad student code for he's not technically in our club, but he hates brown people so much that we invite him to the Christmas party. OK, thank you so much. After college, Miller headed to Capitol Hill, where his old pal, David Horowitz, got him a job as press secretary for then Minnesota congresswoman, Michelle Bachman. Ah, jump scare. I haven't heard that name in years. You remember Michelle Bachman, don't you? The Tea Party psycho who claimed the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. I'm so sorry. Accused Huma Abedin of having ties to the Muslim brotherhood and called Disney's The Lion King gay propaganda. Like Scar is definitely a bitchy queen. I'll give her that. But the Lion King isn't even by coded to me. It's hetero. It's totally hetero. In 2009, Miller met in many ways his nativist soulmate. When he began working for Alabama senator and living Confederate statue, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the senator whose actions and face demand that we ask the question, what would it look like if an elf on the shelf joined the KKK? I'm sorry. I know he always just seems to pop up like a ghost from the battle of Gettysburg. In the spring of 2013, a bipartisan group of eight senators had drafted a bill that offered increased security at the US Mexico border in exchange for a path towards citizenship for undocumented immigrants living already in the US. The bill looked all but certain to pass. To say that Stephen Miller and his boss were ripped shit about this legislation was an understatement. The two men were completely incensed at the prospect of any compromise whatsoever on immigration. Miller called Hill reporters and other congressional offices round the clock to blunt the measure. Thanks in part to his relentless lobbying, the bill died. By that point, Miller had an established reputation in the halls of Congress known for his brazenness, his enormous forehead and smoking like a chimney. Oh, I bet he smelled like Joe Campbell's nutsack. Not great for the old complexion either, Stephen. This guy is simply begging to age like milk. Miller's myopic obsession with immigration carried him forward when sessions became the first and only sitting US senator to endorse Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary. We all know what happened next. Okay, dear God, how many times can we replay the 2016 Trump victory? Miller continually denied being a white nationalist, but his presence on the Trump campaign and later in the Trump White House certainly set all the white nationalist bloggers clapping like dolphins. After Trump's win, Miller didn't want an agency nomination or position that would subject himself to too much legal and congressional scrutiny. Instead, he asked to have the amorphous internal group, the domestic policy council. There he would try to do maximal damage with minimal oversight. Stephen Miller's most lasting legacy from the first Trump administration were two of its cruelest policies, the Muslim ban and a zero tolerance border policy that separated children from their parents. His very first week in office, President Trump signed an executive order engineered by Miller, barring all people from seven Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. This immediately sparked a wave of outcries, protests and legal challenges. And a court eventually struck the sloppily constructed order down on the grounds that it was legally speaking, whack. But it still created shockwaves. Airports broke out into chaos with valid visa holders suddenly in limbo. University students from the seven nations targeted were either stuck in the U.S., unable to return home or stuck in their country of origin, unable to return to school. All the while, Stephen Miller watched from his protected position with Glee, like Nero watching Rome burn. If Nero were a man in his early thirties who looked 50. Miller continued on and rewrote a narrower version of the ban that the courts ultimately upheld armed with the lessons of David Horowitz. He laundered white supremacist ideas through language about heritage, economics and national security. He quickly came to understand that the president's positions were largely based on the last person he had spoken to, because Donald Trump is a baby with no object permanence. And Miller used that to his advantage, laser focused on his immigration obsession. In 2017, he convinced Trump to cancel DACA, an Obama era order that protected undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as children. In an email to a Breitbart editor, he said that expanding the quote, foreign born share of the U.S. workforce was an instance of immigration being used to replace existing demographics. If that tinfoil hat rhetoric sounds familiar, it's because it's a well known far right conspiracy called the great replacement. One of the first things Stephen Miller did in the White House was establish an office dedicated exclusively to the demonization of immigrants called the victims of immigration and crime engagement. Miller proposed almost verbatim immigration policies recommended by far right think tanks like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which was founded by noted eugenicist and white supremacist John Tanton. Those white nationalist accusations were becoming increasingly difficult to evade. A 2019 report from the civil rights nonprofit, the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed more than 900 emails Miller had sent to a Breitbart editor over a 15 month period between 2015 and 2017. 900 emails? Log off, my dude. In the emails, Miller urged Breitbart writers to aggregate stories that highlighted crime committed by immigrants and non white people and directed them to his favorite white supremacist journals like the aforementioned American Renaissance and V Dare. Other highlights from the leaked emails included Miller being pissy that Amazon removed Confederate flag merch from its marketplace after the 2015 Charleston South Carolina shooting where a white man went on an anti black rampage and killed nine parishioners at a black church. Miller also promoted the racist French novel The Camp of Saints in the emails, another work popular among white nationalists about the destruction of the white world by non white refugees. But wait, there's more in another email Miller approvingly forwarded an article arguing that the US should deport immigrants on trains quote to scare out the people who want to undo our country. But don't call him racist. Don't you dare call him racist. Here he is throwing a hissy fit over the allegation that he may be racist lobbed by CNN's Jim Acosta. Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia? Jim, as actually I honestly say, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It's actually reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree that in your mind, no, this is an amazing, this is an amazing moment. This is an amazing moment that you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hardworking immigrants who do speak English from all over the world. Jim, have you honestly, Jim, have you honestly never met a immigrant from another country who speaks English outside of Great Britain and Australia? Also cosmopolitan bias, bitch, you're from Santa Monica. The SPLC report spurred calls for his resignation, but only from Democrats. Stephen Miller went on to become one of the Trump administration's longest serving soldiers, surviving the near constant turmoil and turnover that came to characterize the Trump White House. Again, Miller's nebulous position on the White House org chart shielded him from serious consequences, but it also allowed him to walk around like he owned the joint, which even is equally awful. Trump admin colleagues found unbearable. Miller had inserted himself into the Department of Homeland Security's policymaking so often that DHS officials literally started hiding their work from him. At one point, the head of the DHS ended up holding meetings in a classified security bunker just to keep Miller away, which then convinced Miller that there was a cabal of deep state actors trying to thwart Trump's agenda. I actually do love the idea that the deep state is just a group of people trying to avoid Stephen Miller. A conspiracy theory I can get by. Okay, let's take a quick break from Stephen's endless barking to talk about his personal life. Sorry in advance. In college, he was rumored to have an on again off again fling with a Latina classmate who was mean to him, which sounds like it could be part of his immigrant hating supervillain origin story, except for the fact that he already made hating immigrants his entire personality before he got to college. But beyond that one relationship that was more like light bullying, Stephen, a heavy smoker with a receding hairline in the bedroom eyes of a serial killer's minion, wasn't very popular with the ladies. Until that is one very special lady came along, cue the romantic music. That was the theme from Suspiria, a 1977 Italian cult classic about a coven of murderous witches that retain their power through horrifying human sacrifice, which even though I had to stop watching it at the razor wire scene is actually a more heartwarming story than that of the courtship between Stephen Miller and his awful wife, Katie Waldman. Either way, I'm sleeping with the lights on. OK, so Katie grew up in West in Florida where like her husband, she was completely unremarkable except for her willingness to be mean and annoying for attention. When she was in high school, she got into a feud with one of the only black teachers on her school's faculty over the teaching of Toni Morrison's beloved. And after the dust settled on that, she tried to bully the teacher's kid, one of the few black students in her school. Wow, she sounds amazing. While involved in student government at the University of Florida, her greatest achievement was voting down a measure that would have sent condolences to the family of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was murdered by a neighborhood vigilante. In a thorough profile of the couple's obnoxiousness, Vanity Fair found sources from throughout Katie's life that described her as sociopathic, horny for power and friendless. OK, maybe she and Stephen Miller are actually soulmates. Anyway, one Thanksgiving early in his White House tenure, Stephen's parents asked him if he'd met any nice girls. And Stephen, in his typical normal and cool way, screamed at them that the topic was off limits. Something tells me that that's not the first Thanksgiving meal that Stephen Miller has stormed away from. But little Stevie wouldn't be lonely for much longer. Katie and Stephen would meet doing their evil bidding for their evil bosses. Katie and Stephen, who was a Santa Monica zero in a DC one, met shortly after she got a job working for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and then the Department of Homeland Security, where she played a role in convincing her bosses to adopt the family separation policy, a.k.a. the policy that led to that footage of migrant children in cages crying out for their mothers, which I guess Katie found pretty hilarious. By the time Katie had made it to DHS, she was already well known for her shameless lack of scruples and for the unholy trinity of traits possessed by all the Trump comms minions, immaturity, arrogance and utter incompetence. So you can see why when she and Stephen Miller crossed paths, it was love. Each had met their craven deranged other half. Stephen had everything that Katie had ever wanted, proximity to power, a willingness to date her and the rare Jewish Republican pedigree. Although it should be noted that many people close to Stephen, including many close relatives and his childhood rabbi, found him just as off putting an awful as the rest of us and have disavowed him. And as Stephen and Katie's relationship blossomed like a corpse flower, so to did Katie's career. She eventually worked her way up to Mike Pence's press secretary. The pair were married at the Trump National Hotel in DC in February 2020. A few weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to a series of events that would ultimately shut the hotel down for good. But was it the COVID or the curse of Katie and Stephen touching their wet little butthole shaped mouths together that sunk the hotel? Impossible to say. And I am so mad at you for conjuring that image. You're welcome. After their wedding, they moved to Arlington, Virginia to mate and feed. The pair have three children, two boys and a girl, or in the parlance of Trump's Supreme Court, two humans and one human minus. But just because Trump and Mike Pence were voted out of office and suffered a now famous public break up in the wake of that election loss, that doesn't mean Stephen hung back in Arlington to rest on his fascist laurels. In between getting his wife pregnant and upsetting number of times in quick succession, he was laying the groundwork for the next Trump administration. During the hopeful ellipsis between Trump administrations, Miller was busy humping his favorite chicken. Illegal immigration. You'd think a guy would get bored with harping on the same scare phrase for literal decades. At this point, it's like seeing the same horror movie so many times you start noticing the shots that accidentally capture the boom mic. And so Stephen Miller basically built the modern version of the right wing narrative around undocumented immigrants, causing all the problems. Now we have to watch him waving around in public over and over, like the guy I see on Melrose and Western with his butt crack out every morning on my drive through Hollywood. It's a beautiful city. In addition to yammering on about immigration on every bad right wing podcast you've heard of and some you haven't, Miller has been busy with an organization called America First Legal. America First Legal aims to fight against policies meant to be more inclusive of women, black and brown people and LGBTQ people across American culture. He fights against what he describes as discrimination against whites, which is funny since for most of his life he and his wife were discriminated against by whites who did not want to be friends with them. Miller was also getting paid by the Save America pack, which was a major proliferator of the mass delusion that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. Stephen's superpower has always been cockiness despite being surrounded by people who hate him. The self assurance of a pro wrestling heel, except he's not in on the joke. And so even before Trump emerged the victor in the 2024 presidential election, he was immediately ready to describe the administration's game plan over the next four years. The simple part is seal the border, deport all the illegals. In terms of the policy sets to accomplish this, you have your safe third agreements you have remain in Mexico, finish the wall, you re-implement title 42, and then you also deploy the military to the southern border. You reassert the fundamental constitutional principle that you don't have a right to enter into our sovereign territory to even request the asylum claim. The military has the right to establish a fortress position on the border and to send no one can cross here at all. You know what? It's stunning how long he has been doing this without improving as a public speaker in any measurable way. Take that Malcolm Gladwell. If the story of the first Trump administration was the story of a group of rabid chimpanzees taking over an airport but having no idea what buttons to push to get the planes to take off, Trump 2.0 promises to be characterized by those monkeys having a passing understanding of what buttons to push to at least get the planes to go back and forth. Which means that going into inauguration day, Miller has what he claims is a concrete set of actionable steps to execute the plans he laid out, including internment camps, plans to deport up to a million people a year, a path for red state governors to deputize the National Guard to act as immigration enforcers, and other bullet points that would find themselves at home on the front page of a storm front forum in the early aughts. Trump has announced that he plans to name Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, a position that does not require Senate approval, which is great. Not that it would matter anyway though. These particular GOP senators have the courage to stand up to Trump, that a slug has to stand up to a salt shaker. Which means that trolling or not, things that Miller said during Trump's pre-election Madison Square Garden rally like this. Who's going to stand up and say the cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone, America is for Americans and Americans only. Are closer to becoming reality than they've ever been, even though they're not original or interesting or even popular. As Margaret Atwood has said, fascism is not exciting. It's always the same plot. Despite the fact that Miller bleeds for a desire to trigger the libs to be known as a provocateur, when history remembers him, it will be several lines down in a Wikipedia article about somebody who had more gravitas than he could ever muster. He'll be a footnote to a footnote, an answer to a triple bonus question to break a tie on a DC bar trivia night. Contemptable, but ultimately like stepping on dog shit, unpleasant, but unoriginal and utterly forgettable. Well, there you have it, Stephen Miller. America's gerbils, the Satan of Santa Monica, the pole pod of the Pacific, the Mussolini of Malibu. Oh God, don't do Malibu dirty like that. All right, Julia, on a scale of one to five weasels, where does Stephen fall for you? You know, I'm honestly starting to feel bad for weasels. I feel like what did they ever do to be compared to these steel eggs? I know. That's not that bad. And with the cost of eggs these days. I mean, come on in this economy. I think he's got to be, he's got to be five because he really believes what he says. And that's scary. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you. I'm going to say, this is a five weasel fire. And for the same reasons that you do. And also his new position in the incoming Trump administration is dangerously powerful and requires absolutely no oversight. So that's going to be great. Okay, time for us to sign off. If you like what you just saw, please like and subscribe. And share it with anybody you think might get a kick out of this. And if you have any ideas for future This Fucking Guy subjects, leave them in the comments. See you next time. Every week.