Stephen Miller tests positive for COVID-19, the disease that killed his grandmother
Stephen Miller Image by Getty Images
Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Donald Trump, has tested positive for coronavirus.
The New York Times reported that Miller tested positive Tuesday after a series of negative tests.
Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, contracted the virus this spring. She is Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director.
Miller’s grandmother, Ruth Glosser, died from COVID-19 in July 2020. Miller denied that COVID-19 was the cause of his grandmother’s death, but in a yet-to-be-published interview with the Forward, Miller biographer Jean Guerrero said Glosser died from complications caused by COVID-19.
“She had survived the initial infection of the coronavirus,” said Guerrero, author of “Hatemonger.” “She was 97-years-old, but she was somehow strong enough to survive the initial infection, but it left her with profound, neurological problems, I think also pulmonary damage. It left her with complications that eventually did kill her, and her death certificate says that she died of the coronavirus. But the White House denied that she died of the coronavirus. It’s very, very strange.”
Following his mother’s death, Miller’s uncle David Glosser delivered an angry message to his nephew through an interview with Mother Jones.
“With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting,” Glosser said.
It is unlikely if not impossible Miller contracted the virus from his spouse, who recovered and returned to work in May. (A co-habitating partner passes the virus on to their partner in just 19% of cases).
Miller is one of many White House officials who tested positive following the Rose Garden event announcing Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced on Monday she had tested positive.
“Over the last five days I have been working remotely and self-isolating, testing negative every day through yesterday. Today, I tested positive for COVID-19 and am in quarantine,” Miller said in a statement.
Miller, a Santa Monica, California native, has served as one of the president’s main speechwriters and communications advisor. Together with senior White House advisor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Miller wrote the president’s March 12, 2020 Oval Office speech addressing the coronavirus.
The speech termed COVID-19 “a foreign virus.”
“This is not a financial crisis,” President Trump said at the time. “This is just a temporary moment of time that we will overcome as a nation and as a world.”
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