Trump speechwriter calls Biden address ‘tedious’

Stephen Miller, a top adviser and speechwriter for former President Trump, slammed President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, calling it “tedious & unoriginal.”

Miller criticized the speech’s “laundry list” style as lacking inspiration, saying in a tweet that it featured “no outreach, no bipartisanship, no surprises, no warmth” and calling it “lifeless and dry.”

It is striking just how tedious & unoriginal the rhetoric was in Biden’s speech. Also, no outreach, no bipartisanship, no surprises, no warmth — a lifeless and dry address.

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) April 29, 2021

Biden used his speech Wednesday night before a socially distanced group of bipartisan lawmakers to tout his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and call on Congress to pass his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure plan, saying that “America is on the move again” after a series of crises.

The president also called on Congress to pass sweeping legislation on guns, climate change and immigration, though Miller — a top adviser to Trump on immigration — criticized Biden on Thursday for what he argued was insufficient focus on the surge of migrants at the border, which he called “the worst border crisis in our history.”

The US is enduring the worst border crisis in our history. Biden ignored the crisis entirely in his address (other than making a brief push for amnesty). He also declined to explain his decision to halt criminal deportations, expand low-wage visas, or raise the refugee cap. 1/3

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) April 29, 2021

Biden said in his speech that the U.S. must “get at the root problem of why people are fleeing … to our southern border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador: the violence, the corruption, the gangs and the political instability, hunger, hurricanes, earthquakes, natural disasters.”

Miller was a key architect of some of Trump’s most notable speeches, like his inaugural address and his speech accepting the Republican nomination for reelection in 2020.

Trump’s inauguration speech in January 2017 drew attention for its stark rhetoric describing what he called “American carnage” and a fight for “the forgotten” men and women in the United States.

“Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge, and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential,” Trump said in the speech.

A CBS poll conducted after Biden’s speech Wednesday found more than 8 in 10 viewers said they approved of the president’s message. Just 15 percent said they disapproved of the speech. Meanwhile, 78 percent indicated the speech made them feel “optimistic about America.”