Gavin Newsom tore into Trump goon Stephen Miller for dramatically shifting blame after the shooting of 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse Alex Pretti.
The White House deputy chief of staff appeared to lay the blame for the Minneapolis killing on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her charges Tuesday, mere hours after she claimed she was just following orders.
The California governor leapt on the opportunity to capitalize on the MAGA infighting, posting a diptych of the starkly different tones Miller had taken since Pretti’s death.
“Stephen Miller 3 days ago: Alex Pretti is a domestic terrorist,” his press team posted on X. “Stephen Miller today: Fire Kristi Noem. She went rogue!!!”
Miller’s drastic change of tack came after Noem, who has been dubbed “ICE Barbie” for her love for dressing up in various law enforcement uniforms, said, “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” according to Axios.
As Newsom pointed out, Noem’s line of defense flipped a switch for Miller, who broke from the “domestic terrorist” argument blaming Pretti to turn on her.
In a statement to CNN, Miller rolled out from the bus under which his colleague had thrown him to shove her down in his place.
He claimed the White House had “provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors.”
He added, “We are evaluating why the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] team may not have been following that protocol.”
Just weeks before, the White House immigration czar and Noem were spotted awkwardly dancing together to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” at Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago.
Now that’s a distant memory. Noem’s job is widely thought to be in jeopardy, and Axios reports that her comments in the aftermath of the shooting—saying Pretti wanted to “massacre” federal agents—is regarded by officials as both wrong and escalatory.
Miller, too, is under fire inside the administration, according to the news site, as numerous sources said blame is shifting between him and the agents involved for making inaccurate reports after the killing.
One said that from agents’ reports, Miller “heard ‘gun’ and knew what the narrative would be: Pretti came to ‘massacre’ cops.”
In a later statement to Axios, Miller said, “Any early comments made were based on information sent to the White House through CBP.”
On Tuesday his wife, podcaster Katie Miller, began frantically posting on X, sharing extracts from the same article detailing the commands Miller claimed he gave to agents on the ground in Minnesota, which he said were not followed.
Newsom’s press team pounced on her posts too, saying, “Stephen Miller’s wife is putting in a late shift tonight trying to save his job.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
