White House adviser Stephen Miller uses "trolling tendencies" on national stage, reporter says
White House senior adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller is one of the early examples of a generation of conservative activists who have "trolling tendencies," said Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins. Coppins, who profiled Miller for The Atlantic, spoke to CBSN's Elaine Quijano on "Red & Blue" Thursday about what he learned about Miller.
"There's already this generation of up and coming conservative activists -- you see a lot of them on college campuses railing about free speech and inviting extremely controversial speakers to campus in an effort to troll the liberal on campus," Coppins said. "Those people -- the question I try to ask in this piece is what happens when those campus provocateurs grow up and get really influential and powerful jobs. I think Stephen Miller is an early example of that question -- this is a guy who is only 32 but he wields immense power in policy making and he is writing speeches for the president and those same kind of trolling tendencies are kind of manifesting themselves on the national stage."
Miller crafted President Trump's travel ban, and his signature issue is immigration. Coppins said that while Miller was evasive with him when discussing immigration, "possibly because he knows it's extremely controversial and he didn't want to get ahead of the president," but this issue has "defined" Miller's politics for a long time. Coppins said although Miller grew up in a liberal household, he has a "conservative personality."
"He said he's always had a visceral, emotional dislike and loathing of people who break the law and he translates that to his approach to immigration," Coppins said. "His critics will point out that he seems to be very myopically and narrowly focused on a certain subset of lawbreakers, but this issue has for a very long time defined his politics and his worldview."
Coppins said Miller told him that from a young age, he had a "non-conformist streak," and that manifested himself itself in his teenage years as a "kind of high school trolling." For example, Miller ran for student government on a platform of making students pick up trash after the students and he was booed off stage.
"We have video that we linked to in the piece that as he's being removed from stage, he's kind of smirking and looking pleased with himself," Coppins said. "And I think that episode kind of sums up his general approach to needling liberal on the left."
At only 32 years old, Miller has gone from a type of prankster to policy making fairly fast. Coppins said Miller became a fixture on cable news during the Duke lacrosse scandal as one of the only students willing to defend the players, who were accused of rape. When the case unraveled and the players were exonerated, Miller ended up vindicated. From there, Miller went to Capitol Hill, where he became a "kind of outspoken gadfly" and worked for Jeff Sessions when he was a senator.
"When Trump launched his campaign, everyone who knew him at the time -- who knew Stephen Miller at the time -- said there was little question he would end up on this campaign," Coppins said. "From immigration to nationalism to the way Trump provokes and performs, it was clear that Trump kind of embodied all the things that kind of defines Stephen Miller's world view."
Coppins said he believed Miller's relative longevity in this White House is that Miller is content to be a staffer and not a star. Additionally, Miller is young and would never be considered a peer of the president -- something that Mr. Trump appreciates.