Stephen Miller Torches Jake Tapper Over Trump Funding Freeze, ‘Far-Left’ Bureaucracy

On Tuesday night, President Trump’s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, repeatedly countered CNN’s Jake Tapper’s attempts to vilify Trump’s order to pause federal funds.

Prior to the interview, Tapper spoke of the order, asserting, “We’re pushing for answers,” then conjectured that the order would hurt vulnerable people in society, saying:

It is a freeze or a pause on hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated by Congress and spent by the federal government on things such as, well, school breakfast and lunch programs that feed more than 10 million children, and Section Eight housing assistance that helps pay the rent for more than 9 million people.  The majority of them, we should note, are seniors, children or those with a disability, or grants from the EPA to states and localities to ensure that they have clean drinking water or Head Start programs that serve nearly 800,000 low income children from birth to age five. And of course, Meals on Wheels, which feeds more than 2 million seniors who have no other means of purchasing or preparing meals.

Tapper then asked Miller, “Let’s just walk through this because obviously there’s confusion. Is this pause going to affect Medicaid?”

Miller responded with a straightforward answer: “It does not affect any service that the government is required to provide, does not affect any entitlement, does not affect any service to citizens, does not affect any individual benefit, any public assistance program or anything of that nature.”

Miller then offered an example of the misuse of government funds: “We found after the president had issued a pause on funding to NGOs that were settling illegal immigrants, we found that bureaucrats at HHS were trying to funnel billions of more dollars to those resettlement agencies and try to get around the executive order. It became clear that bureaucrats were still trying to funnel unapproved discretionary grants of funds to their pet projects. So OMB, led by Russ Vought felt it was necessary to protect taxpayer resources to issue clearer guidance establishing for these discretionary grants of funding that are not directed by Congress that they go through a political approval process at the agency.”

Despite Miller having just laid out a salient reason for the pause, Tapper asked, “First of all, why a pause? An investigation — sure, I get that. Auditing, sure. Why a pause?”

“Well, Jake, once you spend money, you can’t get it back,” Miller explained. “So in other words, if you don’t put federal programs under review that are wasteful or harmful to taxpayers, and then people hit send … you wouldn’t believe the payments we’ve had to pause over the last few days with bureaucrats trying to funnel money out of the door, to funnel money to the World Health Organization, funnel money to resettlement organizations, funnel money to foreign countries.” For that reason, Miller said, “of course, you have to put a pause on these discretionary grants of funding and have a political review process.”

Miller underscored that “the review process does not include any public benefit programs,” including Meals on Wheels.

“OMB has been clear about this. Jake, we have to get control over this government,” Miller said bluntly. “You know, I’ll just say on this point about NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, Joe Biden gave just one NGO responsible for resettling illegal aliens, $3 billion with a B, $3 billion. President Trump, when he said drain the swamp, he meant it. And yes. So those kinds of spending programs are going to be put under review.”

Miller then highlighted the political affiliations of the current bureaucracy. “There’s two million employees in the federal government, overwhelmingly the career federal service in this country is far-left, left-wing,” he said.

“I don’t know that to be a fact,” Tapper interjected.

“Well, I’ll give you a great example,” Miller replied. “We looked at USAID as an example. Ninety-eight percent, 98 percent of the workforce either donated to Kamala Harris or another left-wing candidate, just as an example.”

“You’re demonizing an entire workforce as having a–,” Tapper pronounced.

“Wait, wait,” Miller countered. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you just say that, saying someone voted for Kamala Harris is demonizing them?”

“No,” Tapper claimed. “So your suggestion is that there’s a bias.”

“No,” Miller answered. “But you use the word ‘demonizing.’ You just said that I’m demonizing somebody by saying they voted for Kamala Harris.”

Tapper scrambled to regain control, insisting, “Let’s get back on track.”

“I am on track,” Miller said. “What I’m saying to you is this, there are two million employees in the federal government. … They’re overwhelmingly left of center … The American people voted for dramatic change implemented by Donald Trump. So it is essential for him to get control of government, to establish a whole of government process for Donald Trump’s political appointees, to review discretionary grants of spending for pet projects that are not directed by Congress. In other words, these are pots of money where Congress hasn’t said how to spend it or where to spend it. This might be something like saying, I want to build a $500 million fountain in the courtyard of the Department of Commerce. This might be something like saying, I want to fund gender studies in Afghanistan. There has to be political control and review.”

Miller then slammed the media for deliberately characterizing the OMB guidance as confusing, saying, “I can’t help it if left-wing media outlets published a fake news story that caused confusion.”

“Does anyone believe that an unaccountable career-tenured bureaucrat should be able to approve vast sums of money for the projects that they personally agree with, that no accountable employee in the federal government has reviewed?” Miller asked.

“We always knew that the media was going to spin up fake stories, to try to create controversy, to try to create scandal,” Miller concluded, then slyly added, “I’m not saying you, Jake. I would never say you.”