Stephen Miller appears to have forgotten who was president in 2020 when he mentioned the topic of “COVID lockdowns” on Fox News, where he ranted about how Joe Biden and Donald Trump are polar opposites.
“People got pummeled for four years of Biden in every way a human being can be pummeled,” Miller, 40, said on Jesse Watters Primetime. “We lived through it for four years. COVID lockdowns, crazy spending, runaway inflation, and, of course, mass migration. And President Trump came in and reversed all of that in a matter of months.”
COVID lockdowns, however, were implemented in 2020—during Trump’s first term. In mid-March of that year, Trump told Americans to stay home for 15 days and to avoid groups of 10 or more people. Toward the end of the month, he extended that guidance through April. In that time, schools, libraries, restaurants, gyms, and other public places closed after state and local authorities enacted pandemic restrictions.
Trump said he was resistant to the shutdown.
“I wasn’t happy about it,” he told Fox News in March. “They came in—experts—and they said, ‘We are going to have to close the country.’ I said, ‘We have never closed the country before. This has never happened before.’ I said, ‘Are you serious about this?’”
In May 2020, states began to ease their restrictions on public places, but Trump deemed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on reopening these spaces too cautious.
Additionally, Miller claimed it took Trump just a few months to “reverse” the lockdowns, but they were obviously not in place in January 2025.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
As for the “crazy spending” and “runaway inflation” that Miller also argued Trump put a stop to, data suggests otherwise. Under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, federal spending actually increased, a New York Times analysis found.
Miller, in his interview, made it sound like the inflation highs under Biden in 2022 existed right up until Trump took office.
“Donald Trump comes back in and inflation is down to near benchmark rates of 2 percent within months,” Miller said. “How is that even possible? We knew the man was an economic wizard, but… how do you get inflation from 30 percent to almost 2 percent in a few months?”
In fact, the inflation level in January was at about 3 percent, and in November it was 2.7 percent.
Trump continues to be underwater on his handling of the economy, a new CBS/YouGov poll found. Also, more than twice as many Americans view Trump’s policies, not Biden’s, as being responsible for the state of the economy.
