A Florida state senator who founded “Latinas for Trump” has accused Stephen Miller’s podcaster wife of calling him a “racist.”
In an extraordinary social media outburst, Sen. Ileana Garcia also accused Katie Miller of leaking secrets to the press and knifing a former Homeland Security secretary during Donald Trump’s first term.
Katie Miller, 34, began feuding with Garcia, 56, on Tuesday after Garcia warned that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and his mass deportation drive—which has seen federal agents killing two U.S. citizens and sparked outrage nationwide—would cost Republicans control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections.
“Ileana was fired from DHS in Trump’s first term because she failed to show up to work,” wrote Miller, who served as a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson and White House aide before launching her conservative podcast last year, in a social media post.
Garcia hit back with a post telling Miller to invite her on her podcast so they could have a “candid conversation” about “what truly transpired” during Trump’s first term, and “how you labeled your then-boyfriend a racist when you were upset that he treated you poorly.”
“Let’s discuss who was responsible for the leaks in the White House, and how you helped carve the floor out from under then-Secretary Kirsten Nielsen,” she added.
Garcia’s use of the phrase “then-boyfriend” as opposed to “ex-boyfriend” seemed to suggest she was referring to Stephen Miller.
Katie Waldman and Stephen Miller were introduced in spring 2018 and became engaged in late 2019 before marrying in 2020 at the Trump Hotel in Washington, according to their wedding announcement in The New York Times. Both are of Jewish descent.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Garcia and Miller for comment.
Garcia was tasked with selling Trump 1.0’s controversial immigration agenda to Latinos as DHS’s first female Hispanic deputy press secretary.
She worked under Kirstjen Nielsen, who served as Trump’s Homeland Security secretary from 2017 to 2019 and oversaw his family separation policy. She was forced out following clashes with Trump and Stephen Miller, who was the president’s top immigration adviser, over whether she was “tough enough” on the border.
Her ousting strengthened Miller’s grip on the administration’s immigration policy.
“Miller thought Nielsen was a soft-on-the-border Bushy, and she thought he was an egomaniacal lunatic who hated brown people. Needless to say, that made for awkward moments in the Oval [Office] and Cabinet Room,” a former senior Trump administration official told the Daily Beast at the time.
Nielsen openly wondered if Miller had leaked against her to the press or trash-talked her behind her back to Trump, another administration official told the Beast.
In those days, Miller was seen as a skilled but low-key operator working behind the scenes to outlast other senior officials, stay on the president’s good side, and expand his reach.
This time around, he has taken a far more public-facing role, including raging against Democrats and federal judge on network TV, and leading a smear campaign against two U.S. citizens who were killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this month.
Miller has branded both mother-of-three Renee Nicole Good, who was shot in the face by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7, and Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti, who was wrestled to the ground and shot in the back by Border Patrol agents on Saturday, as “domestic terrorists.”
Anger over their deaths has reached a fever pitch, with even some conservative lawmakers and pundits begging Trump to de-escalate the situation or face the wrath of voters in November.
There have also been growing calls to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has tried to deflect responsibility to Stephen Miller.
As of Wednesday, the two immigration hardliners were locked in a battle over who’s to blame for the president’s record-low polling on the issue, suggesting that past truly is prologue.
