The White House doesn't give a damn about that poem on the Statue of Liberty

2025-04-27 17:09:48admin

Just when you think the Trump Era could not get even more bizarre, someone from the administration comes along and takes a baseball bat to our conceptions of normality like Beyoncé to a TV camera.

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On Wednesday, Trump advisor Stephen Miller took questions during the press briefing over the administration's new push for immigration reform. Just as he was finishing up, he got into a sparring match with CNN's Jim Acosta, who's been very vocal in battling the way this White House has handled the press.

The exchange turned pretty nasty, pretty quickly. It got off to a bit of an absurd start when Acosta brought up "The New Colossus," the famous poem by Emma Lazarus printed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Ya know, it's the one that says, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

Miller said the poem was not relevant to anything having to do with immigration reform because it was "added later."

Things devolved from there as the two debated an aspect of the proposed policy that would favor immigrants who speak already speak English and Acosta asked, "Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?"

Welp, that pissed off Miller big time.

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He unwound in a bizarre sidebar rant to Acosta, lecturing:

“It reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree… This is an amazing moment that you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hard working immigrants that do speak English from all over the world.”

Miller finished with a flourish, telling Acosta his comment was "one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you’ve ever said."

Yes, Miller pulled the old, "I'mnot racist, you're racist" routine. Classic.

Reaction was swift and harsh, starting with Acosta's White House press peer April Ryan, who has had her own personal run-ins with this administration.