Stephen Miller, top Trump sycophant and advisor, was part of a small army deployed to the Sunday talk show circuit to convince the American public that Trump is a ‘totally stable genius.’ It was a spectacular fail. Miller was combative from the start, repeatedly insulting Jake Tapper personally and CNN in general, in between utterly bizarre ramblings about what a genius, glorious leader Donald Trump truly is, something we would apparently all realize if it weren’t for CNN’s constant attacks.
And while the end of the interview, when Jake Tapper finally cuts off Stephen Miller’s ass-kissing ramblings and apologizes to viewers for wasting their time (you can see that video below) is getting a lot of hype on social media, it was the beginning of the interview that provided one very significant moment. Tapper rightly kicked off the interview by getting the most important question out of the way: Did Donald Trump himself meet with any of the Russians at the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, the meeting where we know Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and then Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort attended. Let’s listen to Stephen Miller’s answer (transcript below):
Stephen Miller’s answer? To change the subject and talk about what a genius Dear Leader really is, if only CNN could see it. When Tapper pivoted back to the actual question, Miller again refuses to say whether Donald Trump met with any of the Russians during that Trump Tower meeting. This is significant. If Donald Trump didn’t meet with any of them, wouldn’t his team be flatly and rightly denying it?
This evasiveness is even more curious in light of the Los Angeles Times report that Robert Mueller is recalling witnesses because of new information that Ivanka Trump interacted with the Russian guests at Trump Tower:
Investigators also are exploring the involvement of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who did not attend the half-hour sit-down on June 9, 2016, but briefly spoke with two of the participants, a Russian lawyer and a Russian-born Washington lobbyist. Details of the encounter were not previously known.
It occurred at the Trump Tower elevator as the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and the lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin, were leaving the building and consisted of pleasantries, a person familiar with the episode said. But Mueller’s investigators want to know every contact the two visitors had with Trump’s family members and inner circle.
Curious, indeed. And here is the moment where Jake Tapper has finally had enough and pulls the plug on Stephen Miller, apologizing to viewers for wasting their time:
Tapper was right, it was crystal clear Stephen Miller was tap-dancing for an audience of one. So, how did his key demographic respond to the interview? He loved it.
Here’s the key transcript of Stephen Miller dodging the question about whether Donald Trump talked to any of the Russians at that June 2016 meeting.
JAKE TAPPER: President trump and the white house have been call the Russia investigation a witch-hunt and a nothing burger, but obviously in this new Michael Wolff book, "Fire and fury," Bannon offered a different take on the trump tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and other officials regarding this Russian lawyer, he called it treasonous and unpatriotic and said that, quote, the chance that don Jr. Did not walk them up to his office in his father's office on the 26th floor is zero. Did president trump meet with any of the called --
STEPHEN MILLER: Steve Bannon's eloquence in that derision not withstanding, it's tragic and unfortunate that steam would make these grotesque comments so out of touch with reality and obviously so vindictive and the whole white house staff is deeply disappointed in his comments, which were grotesque. And with respect to the trump tower meeting that he's talking about, he wasn't even there when any of this went down. So he's not a remotely credible source on any of it. It reads like an angry, vindictive person spouting off to a highly discredible author. The book is best understood as a work of very poorly written fiction. And I also will say that the author is a garbage author of a garbage book. And the tragic thing about this book, and there are many things about it that are unfortunate, but the portrayal of the president in the book is so contrary to reality, to the experience of those who work with him, to my own experience having spent the last two years with him, you know, on the campaign I had the chance to travel all across the country with the president on trump force one. It would be the president, me, Dan scavino, hope hicks, a few other people going from rally to rally to rally to rally and I saw a man who was a political genius. We would be going down, landing, there would be a breaking news development and in 20 minutes he would dictate ten paragraphs of new material to address that event and then deliver flawlessly in front of an audience of 10,000 people.
JAKE TAPPER: You were in the campaign during that trump tower meeting, I believe? Just to answer the question because you were there and Steve Bannon was not, did any of those people from that meeting meet with president trump, as Bannon says the chance that he didn't -- don Jr. Didn't walk these jumos is zero. Did president trump meet any of those people?
STEPHEN MILLER: I have no knowledge of anything to do with that meeting.
JAKE TAPPER: Okay.