Stephen Miller Schools Helpless Reporters

The "Millerator" gives White House press corps a civics lesson.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, strikes me as one of the most unusual characters I’ve ever observed (from afar) in Washington. There’s something novelistic about him, and were Saul Bellow still alive, I could imagine him being inspired by Miller to create a funny character.

I was surprised to read that he’s from Santa Monica. Growing up in Southern California in the nineties, he must have seemed very peculiar to the kids around him. The first time I saw him, he was giving what I call one of his “reality lectures” to a hapless reporter who was interviewing him about one of Trump’s policies. At the time, I got the vague impression that he’d grown up in a cultivated family in the South—the sort of family that had a big library and still talked about history and civics at the dinner table. He has a slightly formal, slightly supercilious way of speaking that reminds me of guys I’ve met from that social milieu.

This morning I was gratified to see the “Millerator” giving a reality lecture on civics to the White House press corps. Pretty rich stuff.