Leaked Emails Show Stephen Miller Promoted White Nationalist Materials

Senior Advisor to the president Stephen Miller is seen during an immigration event with President Donald Trump, June 22, 2018 in Washington, DC. Image by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
(JTA) — White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist materials to the right-wing website Breitbart News as the 2016 presidential election neared.
Many of the 900 emails sent from March 2015 to June 2016 “showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency,” according to a report on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
SPLC’s Hatewatch blog reviewed the emails, which were leaked by then-Breitbart reporter Katie McHugh.
More than 80 percent of the emails relate to race or immigration, according to the report. Miller, who is Jewish and a hardliner on immigration — his ancestors were immigrants to the U.S. — did not write sympathetically or neutrally at all about nonwhite or foreign-born people.
Miller, who recently became engaged to a Jewish woman, also sent McHugh links to VDare, a news website popular with white nationalists, and recommended that she read “The Camp of the Saints,” a racist French novel by Jean Raspail from the 1970s that has become an ideological foundation document for white nationalists.
Breitbart fired McHugh in 2017 after she posted anti-Muslim tweets. She later renounced the far right.
Miller also railed against the removal of Confederate monuments and flags after a white nationalist, Dylann Roof, opened fire at a South Carolina church and killed nine worshippers.
Before entering politics, Miller was in contact with Peter Brimelow, the founder of VDare, and white nationalist Richard Spencer when he and Spencer were undergraduates at Duke University.
Miller is engaged to Katie Waldman, the 34-year-old press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence. Waldman’s Jewish immigrant ancestors came to America at the turn of the 20th century.
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
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 3
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 4
Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward A Jewish nonprofit may have accidentally caused Michigan to drop charges against pro-Palestinian activists
-
Culture For Christian nationalists, Trump’s pope picture isn’t a joke
-
Opinion Is Israel really going to reoccupy Gaza? Ask Trump
-
Yiddish World A photo of my bubbe when Jewish stores still had Yiddish signs
-
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.