Stephen Miller in running for White House communications director
Published August 6, 2017

Stephen Miller arriving at Trump Tower, in New York, Jan. 9, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
(JTA) — White House House policy adviser Stephen Miller reportedly is under consideration to be White House communications director.
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He would replace Anthony Scaramucci, was let go in part because of an obscenity-laden interview he gave to The New Yorker magazine late last month. He wasn’t set to formally take the job until Aug. 15, but had been working in the position for 10 days when he was effectively fired.
The effort to find a successor to Scaramucci is still in the name-gathering process, and Miller is not the top contender, the news website Axios reported Saturday.
Miller raised his profile last week after telling CNN’s Jim Acosta during a White House news conference that “The New Colossus written by the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus in 1883, the famous pro-immigration poem associated with the Statue of Liberty, “doesn’t matter” since it was attached to the site years after the statue was erected.
Axios reported that White House top strategic adviser Steve Bannon likes the idea of Miller for the job, and said that Miller was the hero of the West Wing after he attacked Acosta as a “cosmopolitan” for his views on immigration.
Acosta asked Miller whether a new immigration bill favoring English-speaking applicants and vetting potential immigrants according to their skill sets is in “keeping with American tradition” and the spirit of the Lazarus poem. Miller replied that the poem doesn’t matter since it was “added later” to the statue.
The poem was written eight years after construction began on the statue and three years before its dedication, to raise money for the construction of the pedestal. France donated the statue itself.
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“I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty and lighting in the world; it’s a symbol of American liberty lighting the world,” Miller argued. “The poem that you’re referring to was added later. It’s not actually part of the Statue of Liberty.”
Miller has been called “one of the chief architects” behind the executive order which temporarily banned citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries and indefinitely banned Syrian refugees from entering the United States. HE also has ties to David Horowitz, the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a right-wing think tank that “combats the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country as it attempts to defend itself in a time of terror.”