The Megyn Kelly Show - Stephen Miller on Biden’s Terror Response, the Border Crisis, and Trump 2024 | Ep. 152

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Stephen Miller, former senior advisor to President Trump and founder of ‘America First Legal,’ to talk about his firm’s recent legal wins against the Biden Administration, the message he thinks the U.S. military should send to the Taliban, the unprecedented crisis at our southern border, his perspective looking back now at President Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, the 2024 election, dealing with personal and professional criticism, why he refuses to back down, fatherhood, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, Stephen Miller. I've been looking forward to this discussion. You know him as the former senior advisor to President Trump. He wrote speeches for Trump. He was on Team Trump very early on during the campaign forward and kept getting elevated to newer and better positions because Trump really trusted him. Now he has founded a group called America First Legal, which is taking on some of the Biden administration policies when it comes to things like illegal immigration and some of the racist policies that they've implemented, like only farmers who happen to be brown or black can get the COVID relief funds, right? The stuff like that. And he's taken it on and he's winning. His group is winning. Every time it turns around, it wins another case. So he's a great person to talk to about where we are right now. He's been completely pilloried by the media. And I want to talk to him

about that. And he gave some very thoughtful answers on what it's meant to him as a person, as a man, as now a husband and a dad, and in really what his life's work has been about, right? This is the first time I've heard him really frame it up. And he will give you a different perspective on Afghanistan and the evacuations of some of those who helped us in a way that really made me start rethinking the issue. So anyway, a lot happening on the day we taped this. We've just learned about casualties now as a result of two bombs attack, two bomb attacks outside of the airport. And we got his reaction on that as well. God, things are going from bad to worse there. And none of this

had to happen. None of this had to happen. It's a disgrace, the way this has been handled. The headline just crossing now that at least four Marines were killed. Good God. Why? Why? It's just been so mishandled. Anyway, we're going to get to Stephen Miller in a great, great, fascinating exchange in one minute. First this.

Stephen Miller, how are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on today. My pleasure. Okay, let's start with what you're doing, because I think this is really interesting. America First Legal, which you have launched. It's a legal organization, though you're not a lawyer, if I'm correct, but it's a legal organization that's going to sort of do what the ACLU should be doing. And one of the things you've been doing is going after some of the Biden policies. You've scored some major wins. Tell us about the most recent one. Thank you. Well, our most recent victory is one in which we were playing a supporting role, which is we were advising and consulting with states that were suing the Biden administration over its what I call abolished ICE memos. Basically, the Department of Homeland Security issued a series of memos that made it

almost impossible for ICE to conduct any kind of enforcement inside the country. And primarily, this occurs in the context of picking people up from prisons and jails. So what most people may not realize is about three quarters of ICE arrests are from law enforcement custodial settings. So in other words, a sheriff's office or a police department or a corrections facility has custody of someone for some crime unrelated to immigration, you know, running the gamut, DUI, assault, larceny, theft, battery, you know, up to and including, of course, very, very, very serious crimes like sexual assault and murder. And when those arrests occur or when those people are placed into that custodial setting, they're run through a federal database that's controlled by the FBI. And that

looks for things like outstanding warrants as an example. But one of the things that it looks for is immigration status, if you are what is known as a removable alien. And that flag then goes to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and they issue what is called a detainer. And that's basically a request to law enforcement to say, we want you to hold on to this person. And if at any point they're released in their life cycle in law enforcement, so they're bonded out by a judge, they are sentenced to jail, but then their prison term concludes, whatever it may be, instead of letting them go out into the street, hand them over to us. And I want to underscore, this is the bread and butter of what ICE does.

It really is the lion's share of ICE's efforts. So when you hear about sanctuary cities, those are cities that when they issuing the detainer in the first place and, in fact, revoking detainers on criminal illegal immigrants that we had issued. And we worked with states on litigation to say that this policy is unlawful for a variety of reasons. Can I just jump in and ask you a question about that, Stephen? Because Obama's policy when, you know, Biden was the vice president was, we're going to prioritize the criminals. That's who we really want to go after, not just anybody who entered illegally, but the criminals. So what, how did Biden's policy differ from Obama's, if if at all, if he was removing the detainers, even on the criminals that had been apprehended under Trump? Biden's policy was infinitely more radical than President Obama's. a member of the Freedom Caucus on immigration compared to the Biden administration,

and the Freedom Caucus being the group of conservative members in the House. And it really is breathtaking how much the Democratic Party has moved to the left on immigration. Really, it's not even the left, it's nihilism, it's nullificationism, basically saying that there are no laws, there are no borders, there are no rules. So utterly, it is true that Biden issued, or sorry, Obama issued memos that significantly curtailed immigration enforcement in ways that I would strenuously argue were unlawful. But he never had anything like what Biden has in terms of a blanket prohibition on virtually all immigration and customs enforcement activity. And so there are a

handful of exceptions to that blanket ban, but they are so small and so narrow that based on my years of experience working with immigration and customs enforcement, I would estimate that you're talking about freeing somewhere between five to six thousand criminal aliens a month as a result of these policies, every single one of them. So under the Biden way, if they say, okay, we're not issuing the detainer. Um, what is Biden doing with those people? Right? Like somebody gets arrested for, I don't know, a DUI, an illegal, great example. They're just cut loose. They're just let loose. And what's the accountability like really hope you show up to your immigration hearing by, there won't even be an immigration hearing. So I mean, to get very concrete about it. And I'm really glad we're having this conversation, Megan, because the way that the media covers immigration is people imagine, and it's possible, by the way, that Biden is so out of it,

he might not even know what I'm saying either. But people imagine that ICE, which has about 6,000 people, so not many, ICE, or should I say ICE deportation officers, there's 6,000 deportation officers. ICE also does work in vetting and national security, encountering narcotics and things of that nature. But they have about 6,000 deportation officers for a country of, you country of 330 million people. Not many. I mean, that's not even close to the size of a large metropolitan police department. So the people imagine that what ICE does is they just wake up in the morning and they

randomly go out to houses and see if any people are living there who are illegal. And in reality, ICE follows leads on criminals. That's mainly what they do. And under Trump, they also did other important work like visa overstays, like national security priority cases, like worksite enforcement, but let's stay on criminals. So here's what happens today in America in the year 2021, August, this is what's happening. So if you are arrested for, let's stick with DUI, in a hypothetical case, if you're arrested for a DUI in New Orleans, no priors, you run through the federal database for a background check, comes back to the federal government that you're here illegally, the local field office will not issue a detainer.

So the people who conducted the arrest may not even know that you're here illegally because ICE won't ever even notify them of such. If the judge bonds you out or sentences you to community service or time served or 30 days in jail or whatever it is, then that will be the end of it. You will not be removed from the country. You will not face any immigration consequences of any kind whatsoever. And when you get back behind the wheel again in six months, even drunker than before, and you plow into somebody in an intersection and you kill a family and the family finds out that you

were arrested prior and could have been removed, then the answer is, well, sorry, your government didn't care to enforce its immigration laws. And that kind of thing happens all the time. And the reality is that there's no reason why any U.S. citizen or any legal immigrant or anyone living in this country, for that matter, should ever suffer that kind of irreparable harm because we had a criminal in custody and we wouldn't remove them. So bottom line is we worked with states like Texas and Louisiana and others who have litigation in different circuits to file lawsuits against these memos. And they have now been enjoined in federal court. And that is a huge, huge deal. Now we're going to have to be very, to work against these memos, you mean Biden executive

orders or what do you mean by memos? Yeah. The department of Homeland security's memos functionally abolishing interior immigration enforcement. And so the, the memos that basically say, except in a very, very limited number of circumstances, that you're to stop issuing detainers. And that's why ICE rules are the lowest level on record. And the southern border states like Texas that you represented have standing to bring such a lawsuit because they say, guess who's going to have to deal with the consequences of these decisions more than anyone? Yes. And so we were also the outside counsel for Louisiana, which was party to the Texas lawsuit. And Louisiana. So it's fitting

that I use the New Orleans example. Louisiana has a very large population of illegal immigrants. Now, just real quick, two other very big victories that America first legal had was we obtained preliminary injunctions against Biden's program to issue restaurant revitalization fund relief solely on the basis of race. And for the first 21 days, by which point the program would be exhausted of funds. And we obtained a preliminary injunction against his USDA debt relief program, which awarded debt relief to farmers, again, solely on the basis of race. So those two programs are what I describe to people as critical race theory in action. We all know about critical race theory workshops. That's critical race theory in action. That's the

government using its enormous powers to reward some and punish others because of what they look like. We've got two big victories in those cases. And we've warned the Biden administration that if they continue down that road, we're going to keep on suing them. I do want to talk about how the Trump administration just had a win. Were you involved in this case where the Supreme Court just ruled that the Biden administration has to revive Trump's remain in Mexico immigration policy. This is a policy you helped push that requires asylum applicants to wait in Mexico while their claims are evaluated. We were letting them into the United States and then lo and behold, they didn't stick around. And now the Supreme Court for now has said the Biden administration has to revive the policy.

So it's it's a it's not the permanent victory, but it's at least a temporary victory. And I guess you guys, you were involved, right? Didn't you represent Texas and maybe was it Missouri on this case? that forces by upholding the district court injunction that forces the biden administration to resume remain in mexico also known as the migrant protection protocol is one of the most important supreme court decisions even though it was only a paragraph that we've had in many many years because this says the biden administration is not able to rescind lawful policies solely to advance an open borders agenda. There has to be a reasoned agency analysis for doing something. And everything that Joe Biden has done on the border is contrived. In other words, the reasons for doing it have

nothing to do with security, with efficient border processing, with making the situation safer or more humane. It has everything to do with accelerating illegal migration into the country. This lays out the predicate for how we can block each and every one of these illegal policies. My organization, America First Legal, is not only working behind the scenes to help out with the MPP litigation, but we're working hand in hand with the state of Texas on both the ICE litigation that is ongoing with Louisiana and also lawsuits to stop catch-and-run release on the border. And I'll make one other point about this. For all of the less statements and lies about the humanitarian aspects of remain in Mexico, let's be very clear. Open borders is inhumane. Open borders result in tens of thousands of people being trafficked, being abused, being raped, and many being killed. The profits from illegal immigration finance

drug cartels that kill thousands of our citizens and thousands all around the world. They finance the criminal organizations that sell young women and girls into sexual slavery. I am tired of being lectured to by people whose main function in life is to make this evil business model possible. The lure of being able to get a lifetime pass into America is the core basis for the entire criminal enterprise of human smuggling and human trafficking. And last year, when we had Trump's policies in place, we had the lowest numbers on record in Border Patrol custody. That meant fewer women getting hurt. That meant fewer people dying in the desert. That meant fewer people being trafficked. That meant fewer people being preyed on by cartels. And it meant fewer people also because the pandemic getting sick. jumping up and down saying all this policy of remaining in Mexico leaves vulnerable people sitting down there. They could be attacked by criminals. They're attacked by gangs, kidnappings, rapes. They don't talk about what happens as a result of an open border. It's essentially an open borders policy, which is, you know, what you're talking about. And, you know, I want to raise something with you because just today on The Daily, my audience knows I listen. This is sort of one of

my left wing sources of information because I do believe it's good to have a mix. The Daily is the New York Times podcast with Michael Barbaro. And he, The Daily, OK, the New York Times, was doing a report on the crisis at the southern border, and they were talking about how Kamala Harris completely botched. She's our czar now. She was going to sort of she stood up in front of the president of the country and said, we're going to root out corruption no matter where it is and talk tough. And he he looked at her and said, has there been one allegation against me and slammed his hand down and said, no, there hasn't. Well, sure enough, immediately after many allegations of corruption have come up against him, he's completely in the mix on, you know, lots of allegations and just corrupt behavior

involving law enforcement and so on. And what are we doing in response to it? Nothing. So she went down there and talked a big game. Then when push came to shove, she and we, the United States, has done nothing to address the corruption because that's what they say is the root cause of folks there wanting to come to the United States. They don't want to live down there. They can't get ahead there. Their government's corrupt. It's no way to live. So the other alternative is stop people from crossing the border, right? Like if you're not going to crack down on the root causes and the people are going to keep coming here, then you're going to have to crack down on the southern border because we do have to have a country. It does have borders that need to be enforced for all sorts of reasons. And even the New York Times, Stephen, was talking about how the Biden

administration isn't doing that. There's that there's a true crisis now with with people coming across. And they even admitted that those questioned say they understand it's a new day, that Biden won't be as tough as Trump, and that this is their chance to sneak into our country because they don't believe that Biden will impose any penalty on them for doing it? To understand the border, you only have to understand cause and effect. If you let people into the country illegally, more will come. And the whole world witnessed this with breakneck speed. When Biden removed the guardrails and the enforcement mechanisms that President Trump had put into place, remain in Mexico, sodom reform, safe third relocation, in other words, send asylum seekers to an alternate location to process their requests, and the many other reforms, when those were pulled away, the whole world descended

illegally on our border. And here's the other thing. It's not just the Northern Triangle countries who I have extensive experience with over the last four years, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, it's all over the world. 160 countries in a typical month descend illegally on our border, not just from our hemisphere, but also from Asia, from the Middle East, from Africa, from everywhere. One in three illegal immigrants at this point in time are coming from outside of Mexico and the Northern Triangle. The reality is that most illegal immigration is driven by a pure economic incentive. Hundreds of millions of people around the world subsist on a dollar a day. They live in extreme poverty.

Many other people live in what you might call standard poverty, sort of the normal level of poverty in the world. You add those two numbers up, you have billions of people who stand to economically benefit from coming illegally to the United States. And so as long as people can afford to either pay a cartel to come to the country, or if they're going to overstay a visa to afford a plane ticket, you're going to have unending illegal immigration if you don't have enforcement, if you don't have consequences. Congress enumerated very specific rules and conditions for entry. We could have a long debate about what those rules ought to be and how they ought

to be changed, but those are the rules. Those rules mean nothing. If there's a catch-all get-around, if you just cross the border illegally and you get in anyways, it degrades wages, it degrades living conditions, it depletes our treasury, it undermines our public health, it jeopardizes our public safety. Illegal immigration in every respect is a humanitarian catastrophe, both for the sending countries and the receiving countries. You tolerate lawlessness and you create only heartache and suffering. And that's what we're seeing now in history's worst border crisis, because we've had surges in the past. We've never had anything even approaching the scale and the scope of what we're having right now. Just one dimension to illustrate the point. The single worst month for President Obama for

unaccompanied alien children occurred in 2014. We remember it well. The first year that Americans were really exposed to large numbers of teenage and other migrants under the age of 18 crossing the border illegally in 2014. His worst month that year was around 10,000. The last five months under President Biden has been between 14 and 20,000 consecutively. In other words, every single month under Biden for the last five months has blown Obama's worst month out of the water and almost doubling it in the last month. And Obama's month was a deviation. It went up, it spiked, and it went back down. This is the new normal to have 15,000 to 20,000 unaccompanied children crossing our borders, being delivered by smugglers and cartels every single month. What Biden has wrought has no precedent, no precedent in the history of our country,

really probably any country. Up next, I'm going to ask Stephen about the most controversial piece of Trump's immigration policy, which is the family separation policy, right? And how families were separated in large numbers under Trump. And some kids have still not reportedly been reunited with their families. What does he have to say about it? We'll get into it next. Why are unaccompanied minors coming now? Right. Because it's like I understand when they come with their families, the parents are trying to create a new life. I get that. Why are the unaccompanied minors coming right now in particular numbers?

Very specific reason. There's actually one very singular cause. And it's at the heart of a lawsuit that we are filing right now with the state of Texas through America First Legal. Last year, when the pandemic hit, President Trump instituted a public health authority that is known as Title 42. So anytime you hear the words or see the words Title 42, that's what it's referred to.

It's a public health statute that says that the Department of Health and Human Services, the statute says the Surgeon General, but by regulation, it's devolved to the director of the CDC, that the Department of Health and Human Services through the CDC can suspend the entry of goods or people if it threatens public health with a communicable disease. So we triggered that statute when the pandemic hit in order to stop illegal immigration, because the process for illegal immigration usually involves extensive cohabitation, extensive contact with border agents and law enforcement personnel, lengthy time in custody, and many other events that lead to super spreaders, that lead to significant public health harms. And so we instituted Title 42 across the board, all demographics, all ages. And so in the case of unaccompanied minors who are disproportionately teenagers, what that meant was that just like every other country in the world, we would call their local government, we would contact their

embassies, we'd contact their consulates, we'd arrange for a flight of miners, hand them off to their health and human services and their diplomatic and our country hit record lows for modern times. I say modern times because this is a more modern phenomenon. It hit record lows, like nothing the Border Patrol had ever seen before. And that persisted until there was some litigation over it. But I'll fast forward through that. Biden comes in. The D.C. Circuit Court has fully upheld the authority to apply Title 42 across the board. And Biden decides to exempt categorically anyone traveling alone at the age of 17 or younger from Title 42, instead opting for a 100 percent resettlement policy. And so that happened only a few weeks into the administration. And so they said for this one specific demographic, there's a guarantee of

resettlement in the United States. Within a matter of weeks, they hit record highs and have continued to set all time records. Again, the last five months, the number of unaccompanied homeowners arriving has exceeded every pre-Biden month in history. So no precedent for what's happening now. So our lawsuit, in which we are outside counsel for Texas, is seeking an injunction to say that as long as the pandemic conditions require Title 42, you are obligated to apply it evenly and universally, and you cannot make non-medical, non-scientific, politically-based exceptions. Right. And if you think about it now, look what's happening in our schools with teenagers. They're being mandated, American citizens who are in

school right now, mandated to take the vaccine, mandated to wear masks, mandated to have three to six feet between them and their classmates. And not to mention the plexiglass. And, you know, you can't play certain sports. You can't sing during recess and you can't. So that's what American citizens who are teenagers are going through right now. But if you are an illegal immigrant coming into the country across the southern border and you're 16 or 17 and you've got covid, no problem. Come right. Come right in. And you're probably going to probably going to infect the other illegal migrants who are there and get them sick. And some of them will be hospitalized. Some of them will get gravely ill. And you're also going to infect other people living in the United States. And this is a very important point that should be obvious, but it escapes people. ill and you're also going to infect other people living in the United States.

And this is a very important point that should be obvious, but it escapes people. A lot of people will say to me, they'll say, well, see, but why don't you just say, well, let in all the illegal immigrants, but we'll test them all first. Right. So we'll let them all in and we'll test them on. They're not even testing them. So let's be clear. Uh, in most cases, they're not even testing illegal immigrants.

They are testing some, cause I just heard that they have some 20,000 in custody down at the border who have COVID. Yeah, they're absolutely testing some. But they're not testing all of them, because you have to understand that there are over 7,000, 8,000 immigrants showing up per day. So the numbers are so overwhelming, so beyond their capacity, that many aren't being tested, just being released. But here's the important point, because illegal immigration is dynamic. That's what I always, when I try to teach people about it, I always try to say it's dynamic, it's not static. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So people would say, well, why do you need Title 42?

Why do you need to just return people who come during a pandemic? Why not just test everybody? And if they test positive, quarantine them in the border for 14 days. If they test negative, release them into the country. Now, aside from the fact that that would be illegal, here's why that would be a public health disaster. If you announced to the world that you were going to get free medical care if you're positive and you get automatic release if you're to the world that you were going to get free medical care if you're positive and you get automatic release if you're negative, well, what would happen is, some version of what we're seeing today, which is that you would see numbers arriving, many of whom are

already sick, many of whom are already infected, beyond your wildest nightmares. The numbers that would arrive would increase so exponentially that the number of people infected arriving in our country would collapse the whole system. And that's a version of what we've had right now. They wouldn't just infect each other. They wouldn't just infect border agents. They would infect everyone they come into contact with. And then here's the other thing. Everyone who tests negative is one, two, three days away from a positive test. In other words, if you have a group of 50 illegal immigrants that have been traveling together for three weeks, they show up at the border, and 10 of them test positive, and then you release the other 40, newsflash, the other 40 are within five days of

their positive test. And during those five days, they're going to infect 400 Americans. When you had Title 42 in place uniformly, the numbers that came were so small, so controlled, so manageable that we did not have a single super spreader event along our southwest border for the entirety of the Trump administration. Think about that. In the worst days of the pandemic, we don't have a single super spreader event at the border under President Trump because Title 42 worked. And that's why we're suing, just like the MPP lawsuit from Texas. That's why we're suing to say you contrived, capricious and fake reasons alter life and death public health guidance to suit your political agenda. And just to just to talk about some of the numbers in July alone,

it was the highest monthly number of migrants detained in over 21 years, unaccompanied children, over 18,000 of them, a 24% increase just from the month before, just from June. And so far this year, there's been over 1.5 million enforcement actions already higher than the full year, any full year since 2005, just to, just to figure, you know, just to put some meat on the bones of how bad this is getting. Um, and for a while there, the media was covering it and then they seem to get tired of covering it. Yeah, they've moved on. And, and the, and the reality is, is that it's getting worse by the day and the consequences are irreparable. But just on the numbers real quick, one of the things I always say to people is that it's worse than even the numbers would suggest.

Because when you hear that it's the highest total in over two decades, basically going back to the turn of the century, around the year 2000, illegal immigration was about 95% single adult males from Mexico. And so basically what that meant was that people cross the border, a border patrol apprehends them, they put them in a van, and they drive them back to the port of entry, and Mexico takes them back. And that's pretty much the end of the story. Now, a lot of them get into the country because they evade detection entirely. But the concept of catch and release didn't even exist in the year 2000. I won't go through the whole history of how we ended up with catch and release, but suffice it to say, it didn't exist in the year 2000. Now we have illegal immigration from 160 countries. So you can't just put someone in a van and drive them back across the border. You have to manifest flights to India, to Nambia, to Brazil, to Russia, and so on.

You have to manifest flights all over the world. So when you have numbers like this are released categorically, unaccompanied alien minors and the vast, vast, vast majority of family the White House with Trump. He initiated a zero tolerance policy. That meant any adult caught crossing the border was going to be prosecuted. And the children couldn not yet been reunified with their parents. That was a huge story. It was, you know, this is where we saw the kids in the cages. And we found out that the cages had been in existence under Barack Obama. But there's no question that the policy was tighter under President Trump by design than under Barack Obama, who was only separating children from their families, from their parents, if the parents were suspected criminals, suspected of hurting the children and so on. Okay. So we had a different policy under Trump. And that is something that bothered a lot of Americans.

Even, even a lot of, uh, Republicans didn't like seeing the children separated from the parents. And even Trump, even Trump came out and said, I did not like seeing those kids separated from the parents. So what do you make now in retrospect, knowing that those 1800 kids are still separated from the parents of that policy? Well, I certainly, first of all, I don't, I don't think that any of the numbers that the ACLU has put out in litigation about any aspect of this is even remotely accurate. And so I would take all of that. We got our number from DHS. They said they put it at 1841, still separated. The, well, the current DHS is relying on the claims from the ACLU that has filed the lawsuit. Um, DHS under president Trump, uh Trump was quite clear in saying that those numbers were deeply inaccurate and that, as best they could tell, mostly involved cases of people who waived reunification. In

other words, for the same reason that people sent unaccompanied aliens to the country, you have cases in immigration every single day. I mean, take, for example, ICE goes to a house and there is, which again doesn't happen anymore, but ICE goes to a house to carry out an enforcement action for a wanted fugitive. And they've been living in the country for seven years and they have two children who are born here and therefore, because of birthright citizenship, are decreed to be U.S. citizens. The parent in that case, since the beginning of INS, has always had the choice to take their children home or to leave them with a caregiver in the United States.

And so one of the things that people don't understand about this, and the ACLU purposely obfuscates, is that, according to DHS, in every instance in which there was an enforcement action with illegal families, they were all asked if they wished to leave their children in the United States or if they wished to take them to their home country. And so much of what the Biden administration is doing right now is they're not trying to reunite people in their home country. They're going back to the people who waived taking their children home with them

and saying, would you like to come back to America and you can all live illegally together in the United States? So I just say that by that's happening. So reunification under Biden is to get the parents who we've already sent back into their countries of origin to come back here and live permanently with their children. Right. We did not have the authority to send minors back to Central America to be with parents who didn't want them to be there. That exceeded our authorities to do, because at that point they were declared to be unaccompanied alien children domiciled in the United States without available guardians. And they went through a wholly different immigration procedure that's very complicated. We don't have time to get into right now.

But just to go back a step, because this whole thing does get very confusing. So under the Trump administration, as you referenced, there was a policy whereby if you committed felony reentry or misdemeanor illegal entry, you would be prosecuted. Some of the people who were prosecuted did have minor children that were with them that were prosecuted for the criminal offense. As you mentioned, it's impossible to house a minor in a Department of Justice custodial setting if you were incarcerated. And so they were sent to HHS. and the and again this gets to my other point which is that the conclusion of of the incarceration then people were asked if they wanted to by ice if they wanted to go home together as a family unit or again to leave their minor in the united states and as we're seeing with unaccompanied alien children under biden the although it may be shocking to some that there is, you know, 15 to 20,000 minors a month that are self-separated by their own families.

Biden's policies have resulted in a number of family separations that exceeds any number that has ever happened in the history of our country. Now, from an enforcement standpoint, the preference of the Trump administration when we executed is what we were talking about earlier, which was MPP. It's obviously a much more effective policy than across-the-board prosecution, but it took a lot of time to build that capacity with Mexico to be able to keep all family units continuously together through the entirety of their immigration proceeding. And just by one extra point of clarification on this, you might say, well, why not keep them all together in a U.S. immigration setting?

In other words, instead of being in Mexico, why not keep them in the United States at ICE? The Ninth Circuit ruled and the Obama administration declined to appeal that you cannot hold parents and children together for more than 20 days. And so then the U.S. government is in the position of either having to release everybody or only maintain custody of the parents. And so that's the reason why the Remain in Mexico policy was such a positive solution to the conundrum. Why was it so hard to, I mean, maintain records of which child belonged to which adult so that when the legal process played out, reunification was possible? Well, I don't concede that that was the case. played out, reunification was possible?

Well, I don't concede that that was the case. I mean, I was not the person at HHS or DHS that's managing the law enforcement process. But again, I don't believe that to be the case at all. There's ongoing litigation about this. And under the Trump administration, all of those claims were vigorously contested and continue to be. But I think that what people need to remember is that illegal immigration

is an extraordinarily confusing and complex situation. You have fake families. You have people under fake identities. You have people who have fake passports, fake immigration documents. It is a criminal enterprise, and it is an incredibly difficult and complicated issue to be able to have everything go as smoothly and as cleanly as say a legal legal immigration procedure and people at ice and people at hhs people throughout dhs were just difficult they could work through an extremely difficult period as vigilantly as they could to try to maintain order at the border during the rush of family owners that were taking advantage of Obama's policies. Well, that's the thing that I get caught up on is as much empathy as I have for those

kids that we all saw in those videos, and I have tons of it. At some point, a family made a decision to take these risks and to cross our southern border, understanding what Trump was going to do. And that doesn't that doesn't mean we don't treat people humanely. But these parents are the ones who put their family in a very precarious position. And it did ultimately deter other families from doing that. And then now we're seeing under the Biden administration that without that deterrence, without that threat, the numbers are starting to go back up. So we're in a very difficult position in trying to deter humanely, right? It's almost like if you deter closer to inhumanely, deterrence works better. It's not the goal. But I understand

it's a difficult, it's a difficult situation. I want to just put a put a capstone on a few of these points, I think it's important. Sure. The, the Obama administration, through a combination of incompetence and ideology, assented to a completely insane ruling from the Ninth Circuit that says that if you legally enter the country with a minor, if you smuggle a kid into the country in violation of law, you can't be detained through dependency of your immigration proceeding. And this word gets complicated, but just stay with me here. It takes more than 20 days to conduct an asylum hearing for a family.

They've all been coached to fraudulently claim asylum, another crime, but they get away with it. The Obama administration, therefore, created a massive incentive for people and industry, a cottage industry, to smuggle children into the country. So you would see many fake families taking advantage of Obama's policy. You would see children being recycled, is the term law enforcement uses, where they would literally, an adult would grab a kid across the border, get into the country, the kid would get sent back across the border, another adult would grab them, and then keep going. That's what that policy has wrought. The Trump administration, working with career law enforcement professionals at ICE and DHS, made clear the law would be

applied consistently and uniformly across the board so that child smuggling would no longer be a free ticket for automatic entry into the United States of America. That saved countless children from the horrors and deprivations of the journey into the United States. The Trump administration, though, more importantly, through our diplomacy with Mexico and Central America, through our asylum reforms, were able to adopt the gold standard in immigration enforcement, which is that all families were kept together, either in Mexico or in a safe third country or returned to their home country. And we had a secure border. We drove child smuggling to record lows and we shut down the entire network of child trafficking that had become so standard

across our border. What you're seeing now under Biden is not just a resurgence of child smuggling. You're seeing child smuggling brought to a level that, again, as I've said before, has never been witnessed in the history of our country. Trump's policy, the policy that I had the privilege of working on, was extraordinarily humane and life-saving. The Biden policy is totally depraved, morally indefensible. And every cartel, every child trafficker, every child smoker, every coyote on the planet is the biggest fan in the world of Biden's policy because it makes their business model possible and profitable. After this, I'm going to ask Stephen about Afghanistan and how the Biden administration has completely botched

the withdrawal. And he's got some really interesting insights on it. Plus, 80 some odd percent of Americans are in favor of bringing these translators and others back to the United States. I have to tell you, I was one of them. And then I listened to Stephen Miller defend the reticence, some of the reticence. And really, I'll let him describe it to you, but really a push to maybe redirect some of these guys to countries other than the USA. And he gave me reason to rethink some of this.

So I think you're going to find this interesting. Stay tuned. Let's shift gears. Not entirely, but a little bit, to Afghanistan, because there has been an attack outside of the airport, and there are several casualties. Now, the headline on Drudge is that ISIS is claiming responsibility. This was a known risk, and now we have, it's unclear exactly who has died, but the early reports are possible U.S. military and civilians up to maybe, then he's 13, dead. It's early now in the reporting.

So we're going to find out more in the days to come. This didn't have to happen. Biden has obviously botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And one of the big debates going on in our country and elsewhere in our NATO ally countries is why we didn't foresee the difficulty in getting our people out of there, why we took too many military out before we didn't before we got all the civilians out, which we haven't done. That's exactly, you know, bass backwards, as they say, and why we didn't make provisions for the Afghanistan people who helped us, people like

translators and so on, who undoubtedly are going to turn up in the dead. So the reason that you're a good person to ask this of is that people in the Biden administration have pointed to you, even a person who worked for Vice President Pence has pointed to you saying this is really Trump's fault because they slow rolled and and even capped, but they slow rolled the number of basically permission slips or visas for for people like the Afghanistan translators to come in. They call them SIVs that that they couldn't get these tickets into the country, even though they'd filled out all the proper paperwork and

so on, because Trump wouldn't let them in. And now, even though Biden didn't fix it, they're basically saying not all the fault is on Biden because most of these slow rolling incidents happened when you guys were in the White House. Your thoughts on all of that? Well, there's a lot to cover there. First, our prayers are with the victims, with the wounded, with the families, the survivors, and with our troops. Obviously, details are still coming in about what happened, but it is profoundly heartbreaking and anguishing. And we just hope that those who have survived will make a full and complete recovery. But as you mentioned, it certainly didn't have to be this way. will surely record is the most inexplicable decision in the global history of foreign policy, not just in the world today, but in the world ever, for as long as history has

been recorded, which is why did Biden pull out our troops before conducting the evacuation? And then after evacuating everyone that had to surge in even more troops than were there at the first place. Nobody has ever explained this. Nobody has ever said why it was done. Did Biden just come up with that idea all by himself? Did he come up with it jointly along with, who knows, Susan Rice, Boyd Austin, who knows. But it is, I mean, aside from everything else, that decision will go down in infamy as arguably the greatest unforced foreign policy error. And it's a, an error doesn't really come close to capturing it. It's a deadly catastrophe. But the greatest mistake in the history of foreign policy, because it was so needless and so preventable and so unexplainable, that then led to, of course, our embassy and our air base and all of our assets, all of our military equipment. But then that air was compounded continually at every step of the way when Biden had a chance to change course.

He didn't change course. In other words, before we evacuated the embassy, when it was clear that Kabul was imminently going to fall, Biden could have easily issued a threat that said, if you touch our embassy, if you touch our people, if you touch our airbase, if you touch our assets, we're going to decapitate your organization. Because we 100% had the capacity. Now that you're out in the open, now that you're organizing your leadership, now that you're organizing your government, now that you're marching on the city, we could issue a decapitation strike on the whole organization. So after 20 years of hiding out, waiting to take over, now you're out in the open, now we can kill you all. Absolutely, we have the capability to do that. But at every turn, Biden chose to compound

his mistake and lean into his weakness instead of reversing course and letting the Taliban cinch their grip tighter around the United States and lose ever more strategic flexibility, ever more leverage, ever more operational flexibility. So you pull out the embassy, you abandon the airbase, you abandon the equipment, and you strand all of our citizens behind enemy lines. So now you've given all the leverage, all the operational control, all of the negotiating power to the Taliban. Now you're operating at their sufferance. And again, Biden doesn't change course. He beans into the state of affairs, says that we're just playing mother may I with the Taliban. We are. And just to update the audience, he literally just said, well, you know, we're,

we want to make this August 31st deadline. You know, it's possible. I need scenarios for if we if we're going to go beyond that. And the Taliban said, no, you can't go past August 31st. No, the answer is no. And honestly, all we seem to be doing is saying, oh, OK, master. OK. All right. Got it. The Taliban is clearly in control and we are asserting absolutely none of our might in order to advocate on behalf of and protect our American citizens over there. Yeah, and ISIS is reading the signals being sent that America is weak and America is speckless and America won't strike back. That's what H.R. McMaster just said. Same thing. I want to be very clear. This has nothing to do, nothing to do with your views, anyone's views on the war in Afghanistan and the decisions that have been made over the last 20 years.

This has everything to do with the decisions that have been made over the last month. And again, Biden keeps compounding it by leaning into it, by continuing to be a supplicant to the Taliban. And so you have this spectacle playing out for the whole world of a medieval band of radicalized fundamentalists dictating to the most powerful nation in the world. And Biden seems totally unable, unwilling, incapable of projecting American power into the situation. But let's roll forward. So then the evacuation operation itself, because the United States agreed to carry out the evacuation from the extraordinarily fragile position of only controlling the airport and no other territory at all. It meant that we had no operational security. You have this dangerous spectacle of thousands of people coming up to the airport every day to get themselves onto these planes and to leave the country. So you're creating an extraordinarily volatile, unsafe situation.

We already know people are dying of heat exhaustion, of being trampled to death, and everything else. But in other words, you are, because the Taliban controls every checkpoint, every street, every exit, every route of egress in the city, and all you have is the airport, You are creating a situation that is profoundly unsafe and profoundly dangerous for everyone involved on all sides of the equation. Instead of expanding the perimeter out and saying, God damn it, we're the United States of America, and we are going to create an operational safe space to conduct these evacuations or you, the Taliban, are going to die. Your leaders will be killed.

They will be taken out in their homes, in their places of dwelling. Next time you're in the palace, the palace will be turned into a heaping pile of rubble. So congratulations, you'll all die in the palace. But we're not doing that. And so we're creating, again, it's nothing to do with your views on Afghanistan. You can be the most ardent opponent of the war in Afghanistan. And I've long been a critic of the war in Afghanistan and still understand that in this moment, American strength and deadly force, if necessary, is required not only to preserve our prestige, more attacks around the world because people are going to see how weak and feckless we are. Now, let's talk about the translator issue that you raised. So I know the the I've read some of the stories that you're talking about. There isn't much to say about it because I've never once participated in any meeting about the subject, especially immigrant visas with this person, nor has there ever been a cabinet meeting, which is what she alleges, that I'm even aware of. There's a woman who went on Rachel Maddow, who she had worked for Trump, or for Pence, and she had gone on Rachel Maddow to complain about you, to blame this in part on you, in the ways I just outlined. Go ahead.

Right. No, I've never, to my knowledge, participated in any cabinet meeting with her on this subject. I don't think there's ever been a cabinet meeting on the subject of special immigrant visas, to be honest with you, which are handled by DOD and the State Department. And the reality is, is that, again, whatever your view is in the special immigrant visa, the number of special immigrant visas, and we've issued about 100,000 special immigrant visas to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9-11. And it is a controversial program, and I'll explain why in a minute. But under President Trump, the bottom line is we issued more special immigrant visas in his four years than Obama did in the four years immediately prior. It's a fact. And so people can have all the political agendas they want,

and this person has been a critic of President Trump. But as they say, facts don't lie. And that's just the honest truth. And that also includes, by the way, the pandemic happened to occur during the middle of all this. And so that actually, of course, slows down, as you might imagine, visa processing. But it's a distraction, though, for a very simple point. You don't engage in a mass evacuation of special immigrant visa holders just in the middle of the Trump administration just because, right? In other words, we are in the process of trying to

plan an orderly exit from Afghanistan to show our strength and firepower to the Taliban, which tried to create the circumstances where the government has a chance to survive. In that context, there's no reason pre-withdrawal to start pulling people out right and left. That is supposed to happen in the context of the withdrawal, which was carried out by Joe Biden, and for reasons that no one understands, again, he didn't do that. Now, there's a legitimate disagreement, a public policy disagreement in this country between whether or not the special immigrant visa holders should be resettled in the United States or should be resettled in alternate third-party nations like Qatar,

like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, etc. But again, the only reason why they are stranded and continue to be stranded in Afghanistan is because of Biden's horrendously botched withdrawal. And one other point on this, the people that Biden is evacuating from the country right now at the airport are not special immigrant visa holders or would be special immigrant visa holders in the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of cases. All of my sources at DHS, they've evacuated about 100,000 people now, say that these are just Afghan nationals who don't want to live in Afghanistan anymore for any number of reasons. So Biden has no operational control of the situation in Kabul or Afghanistan at all.

The Taliban does. The only people who get onto those planes are the people the Taliban lets get onto those planes. And that's the end of the story. So the people that we want out for any reason, regardless of where we would like to relocate them, aren't the ones getting out. Not U.S. citizens, not people that members of Congress believe performed a valuable function for the U.S. military.

The ones that are getting out, by and large, are just the people who can get past the Taliban checkpoints and force their way onto the tarmac. And once you're on the tarmac, there's no vetting. You get a putt down, you get on the plane, and you get flown to Doha or somewhere else and put in the queue to come to America. Once you're there, they do a perfunctory background check, but most of them have no documentation. They have no passports. They have no records. Some of them do, in fact, hit red flags on terror watch lists, and that's already happened. Others, most of them, just have

no records at all. We have no idea who they are, but we know they haven't, in most cases, performed any services to the U.S. government. So what Biden is doing not only is the most dangerous evacuation that you can imagine, but it's also a misdirection play. They're touting the numbers of people that are evacuated. This is some sort of achievement. They're evacuating people at random, Megan. They're evacuating people indiscriminately with no hierarchy, no preference, no demonstration of need, just at random. That is what's happening. And if you happen to live far outside Kabul, forget it. You're not getting anywhere. That's what's happening. So we can have a public policy debate about special immigrant visa holders and where they ought to go. And I can promise you, under President Trump, if he had been overseeing the withdrawal, every single person he wanted

out would have been out before the troops were out, period. Biden stranded them there. But the point is, what people don't realize is that those are not the people that Biden is evacuating. Well, and just in case our audience thinks this is just a Stephen Miller point, Richard Engel of NBC News just reported on August 23rd. And I quote, The United States only wants to evacuate American citizens and Afghan translators and contractors. But a State Department memo obtained by NBC News says every time they open the gate, 150 non-approved people get in. And so while the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of helping Afghan translators not just get out, but the question as put to them by CBS News polling was enter the U.S. Do we want to help Afghan translators enter

the U.S.? Yes, 81 percent. And that includes 76 percent of Republicans. Those numbers are likely to change when they realize that these are not all approved translators. Of course, we want to help the people who helped us. You know, Marcus Luttrell was on the show last week saying there was no difference between us and them. Those guys were like brothers in arms. But the question is, what does the vetting look like under these rushed emergency circumstances created by Vice President or created by President Biden, such that we can ensure that it's only the good guys who helped us and not bad guys, as you point out, who have to be approved by the Taliban now to even get into the airport so they can get on these planes. Yeah. And the situation is worse than anybody can imagine. And I've talked to people, again,

who are inside government and they've seen the total chaos and just a mass of humanity. And there's just no meaningful sorting mechanism whatsoever. People just, they open the gates, you know, because an American passport holder is about to get trampled and they just let on everyone who's around that American passport holder.

And so what does it mean for the United States? Let's have some honest, blunt talk. Let's not beat around the bushes. What does it mean for the United States? Let's have some honest, blunt talk. Let's not beat around the bushes. What does it mean for the United States? As you and I talk here today, the Biden administration is planning to resettle at least 100,000 Afghan nationals in the United States because he has not made any deal with any third-party nation to take any of them. So these people run the gamut of reasons why they're leaving the country, right? Any reason you can imagine will be covered here. Most of whom, again, have never provided any meaningful service to the U.S. government whatsoever. And they're going to be moving to the United States of America. We are going to do to ourselves what France did after

its decolonization period, where it had an open-ended immigration from its former colonies. And that allowed people with radical views, some of whom were terrorists, but others who just had radical views or had jihadist sympathies, to move into France, now in this case, move into America. And that creates an internal hotbed of radicalism. That creates the conditions for situations where you draw a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad and someone walks into your office and shoots everybody. Right? That's what we're going to do to ourselves.

This is real. This is happening. 100,000 people coming into our country in a matter of days or weeks, many of whom, again, have no relationship with the U.s government whatsoever and then once here on a path of citizenship so they can bring in their relatives and their relatives can bring in their relatives and their relatives can bring in their relatives pretty soon it's in a matter of years you're 300 to 400,000 and 600,000 you know onwards up to a million you're creating within your own country the very conditions that we've seen in Afghanistan,

but it's, it's as deadly serious. This is, I mean, this is one of those issues where if you talk about it and you take that stance and, and I don't hear you saying that we shouldn't allow a way for the actual Afghan translators and people who helped us, like if they can be determined and they can, because our military, they know who they are. Do you have an objection to them coming in? My my view on that is that if you're statutorily eligible for a special immigrant visa, which Congress has authorized, we have to abide by the terms of the program. My general view is that because we've seen instances of violence directed against U.S. troops and because vetting, even in those circumstances, is so difficult, my preference would be third country resettlement. But I also, again, underscore that it's such a slim fraction of the population.

And tragically, the people who are under the greatest actual actual threat who provided the most assistance aren't getting out anyways. Right. Because because the Taliban is in control. So, again, that conversation is almost theoretical now because the people that we'd want to get out regardless of where we put them can't get out. And the Taliban, by the way, the Taliban did just say two days ago, no more, no more Afghans are leaving. They said, you know, our doctors, our scientists are all of them. You stay here now. Only Americans get to go to the airport. So it's, it really has become rhetorical at the moment. Again, because it's a purely, it's a purely, unfortunately, it's a purely theoretical debate, but, but just, I want to be very clear on this

because it is such an important point and it gets so emotional and it gets to be such a hot topic. And my primary concern as a citizen and as someone who's worked on homeland security for many years is that if you bring in anything close to 100,000 people from Afghanistan all at once, you're going to create the recruiting ground and the conditions for domestic terrorism, radicalization, and extremism. You're going to have integration problems, and you're going to have inflation issues, and you're going to have a lot of difficulties because not everybody who's on those planes necessarily thinks that Thomas Jefferson had everything right. That's just the bottom line. That's

just the truth. It's a tough, tough part of the world. It's a tough, tough place. There've been a lot of failed societies, a lot of failed countries, and a lot of violence, a lot of, a lot of sectarian skirmishes. It's a rough, rough place. Very, very different from where we are. That's just my number one concern. I get that. But but we made promises to people who helped us over there and risked their own lives. That's why the numbers are so strong in support of living up to it, to the word that our men and women in uniform gave to these guys who helped us and gals. You know, we we have to we have to do the right thing. We have to live up to the promises we made where the vetting has taken place. And we know, we know who the good guys are.

Right. And again, look, there's a big difference between, look, if you, most of the people that we're bringing in to out of Afghanistan, two military bases have no documentation. And I know, but we know them. I mean, we are military dealt with them. They guys have been coming forward left and right guys in uniform for us saying, here's the guy. Let mean, we, our military dealt with them. They guys have been coming forward left and right guys in uniform for us saying, here's the guy. Let me, let me, I work with him for four years. Let's get him across the line. Most of the ones have no document. Most of them have no documentation because they've never worked for the U S government. In other words, if you provide a name that we have on file and we have a photo of you on file and we have biometrics on file,

because you work for the U.S. government, you'll get a hit, you'll get a match. My point is that when they're taking fingerprints of these people and taking facial recognition of these people and taking names of these people, they're not hitting anything in the database because they haven't worked for the U.S. government. And from what I've been told, most of them aren't asserting they have worked for the U.S. government. Okay. I see your point. Yeah, that they're not all who they say they are.

So, I mean, there's no question that this stuff needs to be vetted. This is not exactly, you know, a country that's shown a lot of love toward us and as a rule. And there's a reason that we wound up conducting a war over there because of their harboring terrorists and so on. So, yeah, we need to be careful. And we're not being careful. I just don't want us to conflate two. I don't want anyone to conflate two separate unrelated issues, which is the smaller number of people who rendered long-term meaningful service to the U.S. government and the larger, much larger group of people who are actually being evacuated, whose only common thread is that they want to leave Afghanistan because they've been told if you get on one of these planes, you become an American.

And that's part of the reason why you see such a chaotic scene, such a massive humanity at the airport, because don't you think that everyone is figured out by now? As long as when they open the gate, you can rush past and get through, that you're on a road to U.S. citizenship, don't you think that creates a very big and dangerous pull factor versus the more selective vetting process we'd like to have? So that's the number one issue. But just on the smaller issue of numerically speaking of translators, there's a large continuum of people that were eligible or could be eligible for special immigrant visas. In other words, there's people who were riding on convoys, who were providing interpretive services, who did this for a number of years, and who had great affinity for the U.S. government. And there's other people who, for example, took a six-month job doing deliveries in 2007,

never intended to apply for SIV, never tried to apply for SIV, never wanted to apply for an SIV, and now are trying to get to the airport to get a special immigrant visa. There's a wide range of services that are provided to the u.s government but but the but the tragedy of the moment is that the the people that you would want to get out again regardless of where you put them uh are not the ones that are getting out not the people that are able to get past the taliban checkpoints and so we have to have a reality check here biden's failed exit biden's botched evacuation, Biden's surrendering control of the city to the Taliban means we're not in control if we get to leave.

And that's just the bottom line. Nothing anybody says can ever change that. Don't leave me now. We got more coming up in 60 seconds. I have to ask you a couple of questions about you. You're married. You have a new baby. So congrats on that. I've been thinking about you over the past few years because I used to have you on the Kelly file all the time and you are always just as smart as you are right now. I mean, just wonder kid, you know, and, and you work for sessions back then you knew everything about

illegal immigration. And I've always been just a wealth of information on that front. And then I watch you go work for Trump and I watch the media come after you, both guns blazing. You know, it was just double barreled assault every day. And in particular, if you are a hardliner on illegal immigration, as you know, they're going to call you things like a white nationalist and a racist and all that. I mean, that's just what they do. So I was wondering, as I watched all this happen during your time in the Trump White House, because you're, and I know you're tough. I know you're not afraid of fights, but you're human. So did it bother you? And does it bother your new wife? And now that you have a child, do you worry about her reading that stuff? Like just as a man, how has all of that affected you? elite opinion on immigration to make your life so much easier. You can get any corporate job. You can get invited if you're into politics onto any entertainment news program. And you can get

any job in Washington and life will be very easy for you. But my conscience never allowed that. I understood going into the Trump administration that being a voice for working people of all colors on the subject of immigration and border control, among other issues, of course, was going to cost me a personal price in the form of relentless vilification from the open borders lobby. I wasn't naive about it. Again, I didn't feel that my conscience allowed me any other choice. We made a promise to the American people. We're going to implement a system designed for the benefit, first and foremost, of the people already living here, consistent with U.S. law. You know this as well, when you see a story that's inaccurate or an outright lie or simply defamatory, of course, it irks you. In other words, you know, you're

scrolling through your phone or whatever, and then, you know, a story pops up with some indication. I mean, you don't like that. But I'll tell you, now, especially with a young kid, I mean, you certainly do think about that. I can assure you that we're not going to want to send our daughter to a school where the parents are of the view that open borders are fabulous, but live in gated communities. We're going to want to send it to a school with normal Americans who have normal thoughts. But what bothers me really is what it does to young people who want to serve their country in politics. In other words, all the young people in high school and in college who are talented, who believe in America, who believe in the country and its people, who want to go to Washington, who want to go work in Congress,

who want to go work in the White House, want to go work for a candidate. And they see the way that I am attacked and defamed and slandered by the left, by corporate media. When they see that, it dissuades them from going into this line of work or if they do, from taking up this issue. And I think that's kind of the point, right? In other words, they left things so they make an example out of me that it will scare other people away from doing the right thing, doing what their conscience requires of them. And so that's the thing that really upsets me, because the incentive structure is Republican, go to Washington, go work on tax policy, talk about the deficit a whole bunch, talk about regulations. Just don't talk about the culture. Don't talk about citizenship. Certainly don't talk about immigration. Because if you do, then you're going to pay a price,

and you're going to get blacklisted, and you're going to get banned, and you're going to get demonized and everything else. That's what really bothers me is the incentive structure it creates. And I see that every day in Washington, where a lot of our most talented young people don't even want to get involved with this issue. Whereas on the other side, the world's your oyster. People just throw money at you. You know, Mark Zuckerberg is write you a check to help destroy the country. And I think that's really unfortunate. And like you see it right now in this conversation we're having about Afghanistan. There's an environment of fear. There's an environment where people feel like they can't ask legitimate questions about what Biden's program of unrestricted resettlement from Afghanistan into our cities. Can your school

afford enough translators to pay for all the new students? Who's going to fund that? Is there enough available public housing in your community in the middle of a pandemic? What's it going to do to our public safety? All these questions could be openly discussed and debated. And there's a reason why our NATO allies, there's supposedly a NATO mission in Afghanistan, supposedly, right? So why our NATO allies aren't raising their hands to takeistan supposedly right so why are you know allies aren't raising their hands to take anybody right that tells you something doesn't what it means is that we don't have an honest dialogue in this country because of that fear factor because people think they're going to be attacked and demeaned and it's just not worth it just keep about taxes

marginal tax rate it's true no i mean, I mean, they use, they use, they definitely use those words, uh, to silence, to intimidate instead of engaging on the ideas and with the facts, it's much easier to call names and hope the other person is shamed into silence. Um, and this is a fraught issue, you know, for anybody who takes it on. Um, I hope you'll forgive me for asking you about this hateful book about you, because I just want to give you the chance to weigh in on it. It's it's literally called Hate Monger. So this is not a this is not an attempt to be objective by this woman, Jean Guerrero. It's about you.

It's not a nice book. I'll give you the audience just a sample. She says Trump and Stephen Miller packed the hate that fuels white terrorism and sold it like cotton candy at an amusement park. And she goes through and I just I want to give you the chance to respond to the one piece where she claims that you you were pushing white nationalist website articles from a website called VDARE and that you push this book, The Camp of the Saints, which is all about, you know, how brown people are beasts and so on and are going to take over the world against white people. This is her quote, best evidence that

you are this white nationalist, that you are this person she she portrays in the title as hate monger. With that sort of intro, what did you think of her book? And what do you say to those claims in particular about the like the websites and that book? Well, first of all, I have not I've not read the book. I'm certainly not familiar with the author. And I've had enough time and money. Obviously, I would love to be able to pursue a defamation lawsuit, for many years now, and all of my emails, all of my statements, public, private, recorded, eavesdropped, everything, have all been public and parsed over with a fine-tooth comb for the last six years. If you think about it for a moment, all of the pieces or some, I would say, that have been written about me, you've seen some of the hit pieces on MSNBC

or on CNN or elsewhere. Ask yourself this question, Megan. Have you ever seen in all that time one quote ever, one statement ever produced from me in quotation marks from me that has been objectionable? Think about it. You did the research for this interview. Did you actually ask me about, well, here's this quote from you, explain this quote. Here's the statement from you. There's not a single solitary quote screen anywhere in any of these segments ever saying, aha, here's the quote. Here's the quote from Stephen. Look at this these. Right. Like this book, I haven't read The Camp of the Saints, but, you know, the fact that you would say, hey, compare what's happening in the country to what happened in that book. You're right. We actually went back. We did. I had my team go back. I said, go. I just honestly, I don't pay that close attention when they're calling everybody in the Trump White House white nationalist because they say say it about everybody. It's like that's their way of shutting you up. So in preparation for today, I went back and I said, all right, well, let's see what he actually

sent. And I see the citation to the websites, but you're talking about immigration policy. It's about the one article was never let a crisis go to waste, Mexico's hurricane, Patricia, and temporary protected status. We were talking about articles that should appear in Breitbart with another person there. People can look it up for themselves. But yeah, the quotes themselves, I don't think are as much the issues as the citation of the sources. The statement, the accusation from a handful of insane people that I am a white nationalist or other various smears are detestable and extracurriculars that I have repeatedly rebutted. I'm a Jewish American. I'm not even ethnically white, but I am Jewish.

That's my ethnicity. I try not to spend a lot of my time responding to psychos and delusional conspiracy theorists. I don't think it's a good use of my time. I don't think it's a good use of your time or your audience's time. The reality is that everything that I've ever done in my entire life is to make this country a better place for all the people who are living here of every race color religion and creed and open borders is immoral monstrosity as we have discussed today and it is one of the gravest atrocities that is happening to our country today and has for many years except when president trump was in office. And there are those who, for a wide variety of reasons, some financial, some seeking fame,

some seeking power, some just because they're extremists, who want open borders at any cost, at any price, no matter how many people get killed, no matter how many people suffer, no matter how much money is shoveled hand over fist into coyotes and cartels, and they'll smear and defame anybody who gets in their way. And the fact is, if I wasn't doing the right thing, if I wasn't being effective, if I wasn't making a stand on principle for American citizens, they wouldn't be attacking me. And that's really what it comes down to. Now, look, I'm not going to, I've not read, I have no intention of reading all of these insane conspiratorial things that have been said and written about me. But let's just be very clear. The thousands upon thousands upon thousands of my emails from when I was a staffer in the

Senate have been made public. And out of those thousands and thousands and thousands of emails sharing links from every single publication under the sun, somebody said, oh, well, you shared a link in this article without endorsing it or making any comment about it, answer for that. I couldn't possibly tell you as I sit here today what the backstory was for why a link was sent without any surrounding context or comment. It would be impossible to know. All I can tell you is that my entire life has been devoted to the cause of egalitarianism. My entire life has been devoted to the cause of egalitarianism. My entire life has been devoted to the cause of equality under the law. My entire life has been devoted to protecting people in this country, no matter where they come from, no matter where their ancestors come from, no matter what they look like. outrageous. And the fact is that all of my private emails were made public and they couldn't find one objectionable statement. Who could pass that test, Megan? Well, you're frankly in good company because Larry Elder, the sage of South Central, a black man now trying to oust Gavin Newsom as the governor of California.

He he was written up as a, quote, white nationalist by the L.A. Times, an outrageous smear because he doesn't toe the right line when it comes to BLM and race issues that have now exploded in the country. So it's you know, we see it done to anybody who doesn't sort of toe the right line on these things that have become doctrine amongst the established left. And it, to me, it's just, it's, it's painful because I see how it's used as a tool. And it's like, they use it so often that they really undermine the times that they want to use it. And they really want us to pay attention. You know what I mean? It used to be when you use that word, certainly the term white nationalist, people would say, oh my God, who, what'd he do? Right. You'd be horrified. Now it's like, okay. It's like the guy who used to host the bachelor was called that because he defended that one contestant. On and on it goes. Anyway, I got to ask about Larry Elder because I had him on the show.

He had wonderful things to say about you. He was very proud to count you as a mentee. And now he has a legitimate shot that his numbers in California are getting better by the day. And it seems to me that Gavin Newsom is starting to get worried and certainly the media is starting to get worried about the possibility of a governor elder. So what do you think is likely to happen in that race? And I should say the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against him, given the demographic makeup of California Democrats, Democrats. But it could happen. It's going to be a very close run thing. And the governor in California is extremely, well, the governor in California is under extreme heat right now for all of his decisions related to the economy, related to the pandemic, related to homelessness, related to crime, related to the issue you can imagine that affects the quality of life of people living in California. But as you mentioned also, the Democrats have a massive registration advantage. So we'll see what happens. But I'm hoping and praying that the recall is successful and that

Larry Elder is the next governor of California. And ultimately, if that happens, it'll be a safer and more prosperous and more secure state for all the people living there. But again, to your point, whether it's Larry Elder, whether it's me, whether it's, I'm sure many people that we both would consider mutual friends, the left engages in ruthless demonization of people, character assassination of the worst kind to try to advance their ideological and political objectives. And all I have done as a staffer, as an aide in Washington, D.C., is fight to save American lives from open borders, fight to save children from being killed by opioids, fight to save families from having a loved one stolen by MS-13, fight to ensure good working conditions, good wages,

good living conditions, good health care for families of all colors and backgrounds. And for that, for that, I've been attacked by people who've never once in their life done anything to get innocent people hurt. Just like happening today. Congratulations, because the policies that you have pushed for to the open borders radicals, the policies that you have pushed for, that your friends are now adopting in the Department of Homeland Security, are getting innocent people raped and murdered. That's your doing. You're separating families by the tens of thousands. You're pushing children into labor trafficking and sex trafficking. You're filling the coffers of organizations that have no regard for human life. You are committing a moral atrocity every single day.

You have no podium to stand on. You have no soapbox to stand on to lecture me about anything. People don't know it because the press doesn't write it up that way. You know, it's this really in part is largely blamable on the media. The media doesn't write about illegal immigration in this way at all. So people, good meaning people, well-meaning people who really just want to be informed are regularly misinformed on issues like this because they don't understand that they're the stats that you just gave us, you know, how dangerous it is, the crime that's caused because we have. Yeah, I mean, we have in a given year before Biden ICE removes 2000 people from the interior who have been charged or convicted of homicide. Think about

that. In a typical year, ICE removes, so that means, this is the people, just the people they find, right? Just the people they find. ICE removes 2,000 people for taking another human life who are here illegally year after year after year after year. And those are just the ones we catch. I had to look those families in the eye during the campaign. I had the privilege of getting to look them in the eye and promise, as our president did, that we would fight for them. And we did. The families that lost their loved ones, they'll never see them again. And the parents who have a kid, 16 years old, goes to school, gets a cheap lethal narcotic that was smuggled across the

border. Maybe he gets a narcotic that's laced with fentanyl, ODs and dies simply because we wouldn't enforce our laws. We wouldn't protect our people. We wouldn't protect our citizens. I can give you thousands of examples, a million examples. Not to mention, you hear stories like this all the time. A guy is running a small construction firm in Texas. He says, I do everything right. I only hire legal workers. I use E-Verify. I check everyone's paperwork. I check everyone's documentation. I hire U.S. citizens and legal immigrants to do the job here in Texas, and I provide a good living wage. But I'm going out of business because my competition hires legal workers. So I have to lay off American citizens.

I have to lay off legal Hispanic immigrant workers who've lived here for 20 years because I follow the rules. I do it the right way and I lose my business. I lose my home. I lay off my employees. How is that just? How is that fair? What kind of upside down society takes away someone's living for doing the right thing? All right. Now, this is one of the reasons why you were voted most outspoken in your high school. I think the audience gets it that you are not a shrinking violet. And that's a good thing. I got to end on politics because, you know, the sixty four thousand dollar question is about your old boss and whether he's likely to run again for the 2024 nomination for the presidency. What's your gut? You know him better than most of us. What's your gut tell you? Well, I am not going to make any news here today. All I can say is that the 45th president, President Trump, is very engaged in the news of the day. Anyone who's following his statements can tell you.

He's very, very active in speaking out about all the issues that are happening right now, especially Afghanistan. And he is very, very focused on the upcoming midterm elections and endorsing candidates that he believes are going to be critical in pushing back against the Biden agenda. And so we'll see what happens after that. But I will say this, and I really want to close on this note, which is that getting to work for President Trump to effectuate these policies was the greatest honor of my life. And I'm so proud every day of what we did to make life better and safer for our people, not just on the border, though certainly there, but supporting our police and law enforcement, supporting our union workers whose jobs are being exported to China,

supporting our energy workers whose jobs are being exported to China, supporting our energy workers whose jobs are being exported to OPEC, supporting our citizens who are suffering from severe illnesses that we can now treat through legislation like Right to Try, supporting low-income workers with rising wages and rising incomes and a record jobs market, all the things and so much more that we had a chance to do, including bringing stability and security to the Middle East. It truly was the greatest honor of my life. And I understand, and I've always understood, that if you step into the arena, people will comb over every little piece of your life from the moment you were born to find some little threat to hurt you, to try to embarrass you, to try to lie about you. But the reality is that I've already had the chance to do things that most people could only

ever dream of. So it really isn't about me. But if there's somebody out there today who's in high school or in college or just graduated from college, my message to them is don't worry about yourself. If you do the right thing, if you're clear in your own conscience, if you believe that what you're doing is right for your country and your countrymen, that's all that matters. Your eyes will rest very easy and you will be a very happy person. And if you're lucky like me, you'll fall in love and you'll get married and you'll have a kid of your own and hopefully more on the way. That's all that matters in life. Don't do the easy thing. Don't do the convenient thing. Do the right thing and you'll be happy and you'll be fulfilled. Look, I'm thrilled that you are working on this new project and that you have a good wife

and a sweet baby. And that gives you such a different perspective on everything and just dwarfs, you know, the concerns you had about yourself and all that once you become a parent. And you're a young man. You're only 35 years old. Is that true? 35, right? Good gracious. I just, so this is my, this is my, my birthday week, if you will. I just turned, I just turned 36. And so I am very, very excited to see what my wife got me for my birthday. Listen, I, I think it's amazing what you've accomplished in your young time. I feel like the sky's the limit for you, and I can't wait to see what you're going to do next. It's been absolutely fascinating and enlightening. Stephen Miller, great to catch up again. Thank you so much. Look forward to talking again soon.

Don't miss the show on Thursday. We've got Michael Shermer, a professional skeptic and the founder of Skeptic Magazine on conspiracy theories everywhere. Why they're so ubiquitous right now. And if you knew somebody, if you know somebody who's fallen under the spell of some weird conspiracy story in the news or on the internet, how do you get him out of it? Is it even possible? Loved our discussion. He's next. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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