White House aide Stephen Miller made a rare appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday to discuss the President’s plan to reduce legal immigration. It ended with fireworks. The conflagration started when CNN’s Jim Acosta challenged Miller on the proposal, which would emphasize a “merit based” system for legal immigration, instead of one focused on reuniting families in the U.S.
“Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country?” Acosta asked, invoking the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. As you can see in the video above, Miller was ready for that one, explaining that Lady Liberty is actually a symbol of “American liberty lighting the world,” while the poem was “added later,” making it less important. The entire exchange is worth a watch, if only to see a man with a pocket square deride another man’s “cosmopolitan bias.”
