Stephen Miller’s former high school friend claimed the future deputy White House chief of staff ended their friendship more than two decades ago because of his Hispanic heritage.
“One of the things he did say was that he didn’t like the fact that I’m of Latin heritage,” Jason Islas recalled.
Islas said Miller, the architect of some of the Trump administration’s most controversial anti-immigration policies, ditched him because of his ethnicity when the former friends left their Santa Monica middle school in California and moved to high school.
Islas, Miller and another unnamed friend were described as a “tight-knit band of outsiders” at Lincoln Middle School, whose hobbies included talking about Star Trek, Rolling Stone reports. (Miller, Islas told the outlet, was a “big Captain Kirk fan.”)
Once close friends, Islas said he attended Miller’s bar mitzvah.
But in 1999, between eighth and ninth grades, Islas said that Miller said they “couldn’t be friends anymore,” the outlet reports.
The end of their friendship was also featured in a Miller biography released earlier this year, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, by journalist Jean Guerrero.
“The conversation was remarkably calm,” Islas is quoted in the book. “He expressed hatred for me in a calm, cool, matter-of-fact way.”
As a kid, Miller would allegedly tell Spanish speakers at his diverse Southern California high school to learn English or go back to their home countries, according to the book. Miller’s more extremist views began to form in high school, according to his former friends and classmates. An article written by a 16-year-old Miller shows contempt for Hispanic students at his school.
“When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills,” Miller wrote in a letter to the editor of website Surfsantamonica. “There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Miller’s views became more radical at college. While studying political science at Duke University, Miller’s column for the college newspaper, The Chronicle, “made waves on campus” because of Miller’s “often-controversial takes,” the paper said.
His reputation as a Republican influencer also grew and he achieved new prominence when he appeared on Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor in 2006 to defend members of the institution’s lacrosse team who had been accused of rape.
Miller joined the Trump campaign in 2016 and has remained close since. As he ascended closer to power during Trum[’s second term, Miller was reportedly so widely disliked during his earlier time on Capitol Hill that Republican staffers invented a rumor he liked to play with porcelain dolls to embarrass him, according to Rolling Stone’s profile on the influential right-wing figure.
Now in power, Trump officials and Republicans told the magazine Miller is known internally by nicknames like “the REAL Attorney General” and “President Miller” for his wide-ranging portfolio.
“Stephen Miller has been one of President Trump’s longest serving and most trusted advisers for nearly a decade, and I can personally attest to the respect that President Trump has for Stephen because I witness it every day,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously told The Independent in a statement.
“That’s why Stephen serves as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security adviser because the President has the utmost faith in him and his proven leadership abilities. In addition to being extremely effective at his jobs, Stephen is a loyal colleague and friend. Any suggestion otherwise is false gossip from people who don’t actually know him,” Leavitt added.
