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A tense confrontation erupted late Tuesday evening in the “spin room” on the sidelines of the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in Philadelphia.
While many reporters and campaign surrogates were beginning to file out of the room (or had already done so), a handful remained from both parties, huddling in small groups with journalists. Most were relative C-list names, though a few Republican senators remained to stump for Trump, including Marco Rubio.
One of the other Republicans lingering late in the hall was Stephen Miller, a former White House official thought to have been the architect of Trump’s more draconic immigration policies during the ex-president’s four years in Washington. Miller is one of Trump’s closest loyalists — he has been with Trump since 2016, and was one of the few to survive all four years of Trump’s presidency in the White House. One of his final acts in the office was drafting the speech his boss gave to a crowd of rioters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6.
But what he was possibly most famous for during the Trump presidency was his fiery temper, which came out in interviews with journalists and quickly got him kicked out of his unofficial role selling the strictest of Trump’s immigration policies on cable news.
That temper was on display Tuesday evening when a red-faced Miller, growing irate and repeatedly shouting, got in the face of a journalist for Colombia’s Nuestra Tele Noticias (NTN24) who questioned him about Trump’s tall tale of the night — the ex-president’s baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were eating family pets in a small town in Ohio. The claim has roots in racist caricatures of the so-called “third world”, and as ABC moderators pointed out Tuesday evening is not supported by any actual, tangible police reports, law enforcement statistics or any other credible source.
“Do you have ANY remorse for the dead children?! Do you care at all about the dead children?” Miller shouted, as the reporter calmly responded, “Absolutely.”
“Why are you yelling at me?” the confused reporter responded at one point.
Miller would go on to repeatedly list the names of victims of crimes committed by migrants in the US illegally. The Trump campaign has highlighted such crimes, such as the murder of Laken Riley, while falsely claiming that illegal migrants commit such acts at higher rates than other communities. Trump himself frequently claims this is because Central and South American countries are “emptying their prisons” and sending convicts to the US — a false charge.
Trump was confronted onstage by the moderators of Tuesday’s debate regarding the lack of evidence for his claim about migrants “eating the dogs” in Ohio; he was only able to repeat that he’d seen someone on television making the claim. That moment did not sit well with his campaign, and surrogates including Miller angrily accused ABC’s journalists of working on behalf of the Harris campaign with the fact-checking during the debate.
Vivek Ramaswamy, one of Trump’s two former opponents-turned-allies who showed up to the debate, echoed some of Miller’s anger as he lambasted ABC’s David Muir for “setting [Harris] up with softball questions”.
But Trump’s former advisor Anthony Scaramucci — one of several former Trump White House communications officials who have roundly denounced him since leaving his employ — told reporters after the debate Tuesday that his ex-boss was merely “out of his element”.
“I saw a guy that was not prepared for [Harris]. She was very well-prepared. She had a very good narrative to tell. She had an expansive idea of where she wants to go with the country. He wasn’t prepared for that. So he was going to certain dogwhistles that he uses,” he said.
