Populist Stephen Miller Lives In A Luxury Condo Complex Partly Owned By Qatar

Image by Getty Images
Stephen Miller blasted a CNN reporter last week for his “cosmopolitan” bias, but the White House adviser looks like a consummate cosmopolite in his own right since the revelation that he lives in a luxury Washington, D.C., complex partly owned by a foreign government.
Miller’s apartment is part of the CityCenterDC complex, a sleek new collection of residential and retail buildings in the heart of Washington that is partially owned by Qatari Diar, the Gulf nation’s sovereign wealth fund. Miller’s choice to live in the expensive pad developed with the emirate’s petrodollars complicates his claim to be an “America First” policymaker hostile to global interests.
“When I was 28, I was a local reporter in Dallas renting a studio apartment. But we did have a nice pool,” Jim Acosta, the CNN journalist Miller scuffled with last week, wrote on Twitter. The two came to verbal blows over the Trump administration’s plan to cut legal immigration and give priority to those who speak English or arrive with skills. Acosta asked Miller if the English requirement would mean that only people from Britain or Australia would be allowed in. Miller responded that the premise of Acosta’s question revealed the reporter’s “cosmopolitan bias.”
Miller’s use of the term “cosmopolitan” seem to conflate it with ignorance, or with a narrow social circle that includes only people from a few countries. But that’s not how most would understand it. Merriam Webster defines the term as “having worldwide rather than limited or provincial scope or bearing.” So, “cosmopolitan” means exactly the opposite of what Miller seems to have meant. Of course, the epithet also evokes “rootless cosmopolitan,” an anti-Semitic insult that originated in the Soviet Union after World War II to demonize critics of nationalism.
And, in fact, his apartment in the Qatari-built complex, which includes upmarket foreign shops like Hermes, Burberry and Gucci, might fit the bill for the cosmopolitanism that he seems to deplore so much. What’s more, records from The Washington Post seem to indicate that he received financial assistance from his father, a California real estate developer, to snag the swanky apartment (possibly too difficult to afford on a government salary).
Miller has presented himself and the Trump agenda as being for the Everyman – coalminers in West Virginia and factory workers in Michigan. The policies around that presentation have included efforts to curb immigration and to crack down on so-called “global” influences. That was a major theme of the Trump campaign, which ran an October ad implying that financiers like George Soros and Lloyd Blankfein were part of a worldwide scheme to strip America of its wealth. His reference last week to a “cosmopolitan bias” was an attempt to tie this fight against “globalism” with the administration’s war on the media.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter, @DanielJSolomon
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.