04 August, 2017
Miller seemed to provoke CNN reporter Jim Acosta, the son of Cuban immigrants, who questioned if the bill is racist.
"I am shocked at your statement ... that you would think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would speak English ... it actually ..."
As the two carried on, Acosta suggested the language requirement would boost applicants from the United Kingdom and Australia, Miller replied that it showed the CNN newsman's 'cosmopolitan bias'. "Aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them, 'you have to speak English?' Can't people learn how to speak English when they get here?" However, the weird and hostile back and forth reached its crescendo after the CNN journalist said it seemed the White House was "trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country". Miller's contentious back and forth with reporters during the briefing to promote the anti-immigrant proposal gained the praise and admiration of pro-Trump trolls and white nationalists.
"The Statue of Liberty says, give me your exhausted, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breath free", Acosta said.
As Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski noted, however, despite his argument in favor of Trump's plan to prioritize high-skilled workers who speak English and slash legal immigration on Wednesday, Miller argued against even high-skilled immigrants as recently as 2014.
WHAT?! @POTUS advisor Stephen Miller says Emma Lazarus poem on Statue of Liberty "meaningless".
Mr Miller said the poem on the iconic American statue was "added later".
"I don't think there's anybody on this set who hasn't gotten too personal during this presidency - and I don't think that's just our fault", Brzezinski said.
The exchange provoked laughter, groans and exclamations of annoyance from other members of the White House Press Corps.
In the end, Miller smiled and apologized to Acosta "if things got heated" but added that the CNN reporter "made some rough insinuations".
Though Bolling admitted that he believes Miller is "brilliant", he insisted he just wasn't the right guy for the job.
For Bolling, Miller's spat was a distraction from an immigration policy he praised as "really, really important for the country".
"As has been widely documented, there is already a very slack labor market in the IT and STEM fields, pushing down wages and salaries for American workers", he wrote in a blast email ahead of an immigration-themed address by President Barack Obama.
"But my guess is, it's not the version where Stephen Miller puts him in his place", she said.
GASPARINO: That is the tried and true immigration policy of this nation for many, many years. We're certainly not putting this on Jim Acosta. He asked whether the administration was essentially limiting immigration to English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom and Australia.
MILLER: I just want to say.
Miller also claimed a merit-based system would protect US workers and fulfill a campaign pledge Trump made on the trail.
