A former White House aide alleges in a new book that Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Trump, once told him he “would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America’s soil.”
That interaction, and many others that describe life inside Trump’s White House, is found in a book penned by former aide on the White House communication team, Cliff Sims. Sims left the administration last year.
His book, “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House,” is set to be published Tuesday. It was first obtained and excerpts have been reported on by The Atlantic.
{mosads}Miller is one of Trump’s main speechwriters and is widely viewed as the main person behind the 2017 travel ban on people from several predominately Muslim countries. He is credited with being a significant influence on many of Trump’s strict immigration policies.
In the book, Sims writes that Miller played both sides of the “globalist/nationalist” split within the administration. At one point, Miller was former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s “right-wing protege,” according to Sims, but later turned on him, “plung[ing] the knife” in Bannon’s back in a conversation with Trump before Bannon’s premature exit.
“Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won’t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared,” Sims says Miller said to the president, referring to White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. “If Steve wasn’t doing that, I bet you’d be ten points higher.”
Sims then writes that Miller grew close to Kushner. Miller has remained a constant in Trump’s administration as many other senior administration officials have been swept up in the high-turnover of the White House.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.