Senior Trump administration advisor Stephen Miller on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s recent string of social media posts lambasting a group of four freshmen Democratic congresswomen, citing the lawmakers’ offensive comments.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Miller said that he was offended “as a Jew” by comments made by the four congresswomen, who have been collectively dubbed “the Squad”.
“I’m a Jew. As a Jew, as an American Jew, I am profoundly outraged by the comments of Ocasio-Cortez,” Miller told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting the New York congresswoman’s comparisons last month between Nazi-era concentration camps and US detention centers used to hold illegal immigrants prior to their trial or deportation.
“It is a historical smear. It is a sinful comment. It minimizes the deaths of six million of my Jewish brothers and sisters. It minimizes their suffering. And it paints every patriotic law enforcement officer as war criminal. Those are the comments, Chris, that we need to be focusing on.”
“These four congresswomen detest America as it exists as it is currently constructed. They want to tear down the structure of our country. They want it to be a socialist open borders country.”
Beginning last week, President Trump has hammered the four Democratic lawmakers – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Ayanna Pressley (MA), accusing them of ‘hating’ the US, the State of Israel, and American law enforcement officers.
The president also accused the four of anti-Semitism, quoting South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and suggested they return to their countries of origin. Of the four, three were born in the US. Only Ilhan Omar, a native of Somalia, was born abroad.
Last week, the US House of Representatives voted, largely along party lines, to condemn Trump’s comments as “racist”.
But on Sunday, Miller objected to the claim the president’s attacks on the four Democratic lawmakers was racist, noting the four representatives’ history of controversial and offensive comments.
“I fundamentally disagree with the view that if you criticize somebody, and they happen to be a different color skin, that that makes it a racial criticism," Miller said.
“If you want to have a colorblind society, that means you can criticize immigration policy, you can criticize people's views, you can ask questions about where they're born, and not have it be seen as racial."
Earlier on Sunday, President Trump continued his attacks on the four lawmakers, tweeting: “I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country."