‘Loud, Angry MAGA Mouthpiece’: Bakari Sellers Smacks Down Stephen Miller’s Wife After She Goes Scorched Earth on CNN
Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, recently learned that the loudest person in the room is not always right.
The podcaster and former DOGE spokeswoman, 34, appeared on CNN’s “NewsNight with Abby Phillip” on Nov. 28 and went toe to toe with one fellow panelist, attorney and former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers.
As host Abby Phillip opened the panel discussion by seeking the participants’ reactions to President Donald Trump’s threatening responses to a video by six Democratic lawmakers urging U.S. armed services members not to follow unlawful orders, the conversation turned to Sellers.
Miller demanded that Sellers cite legal statutes proving that Trump’s military strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela and subsequently the eastern Pacific Coast are illegal.
The administration has claimed the strikes, which have killed at least 83 people so far, aim to stop alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, but reports from victims’ families and the Venezuelan government say fishermen and other innocent people have been casualties.
Miller repeatedly interrupted Sellers while defending Trump’s war on “narco-terrorists,” but she clearly tangled with the wrong panelist — he shot back with a 101 on the constitutional right of due process.
View on Threads
The exchange began with Miller redirecting her answer to a question from Phillip about whether the constitutional system of checks and balances between the three coequal branches of government is working.
After first replying that the Democrats and the recent government shutdown explain Washington’s current dysfunction, Miller shifted to Sellers, saying, “I want to go back to something that Bakari said. He said that those orders that were given on the strikes on the drug boats in Venezuela were illegal. Can you cite those statutes, please?”
“It‘s actually called the due process clause of the United States of America,” Sellers explained. “Because can you point to one of those boats that actually had drugs on them? Do you know that? Do you know about the Trinidadians who were killed innocently, who were just fishermen? Can you actually kill those fishermen without due process?”
“So the answer to that is yes, I can cite the Constitution, just as [conservative co-panelist] Scott [Jennings] did,” Sellers added.
His response proved to be the introduction of several satisfying minutes for viewers annoyed with Miller’s spin.
“’Can you prove that? Can you name one?’ Katie Miller was on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip defending the Administration’s war on drugs. And Bakari Sellers was ready with facts, answers and questions,” enthused one fan on Threads.
“She thinks that talking loudly over people makes her an authority. She is not,” chimed in another. “She is just a loud, angry MAGA mouthpiece with a podcast that anyone can have. Abby please do not book this disrespectful mouthpiece and unbook Scott as well. It’s hard to watch your show with these folks spewing their misinformation.”
One viewer pointed out, “She never answers a question, as soon as someone proves her wrong, she skips to another rant and another rant with no facts or sensibility.”
This was just her first rant of the evening.
Miller’s later debate with Phillip devolved into a yelling match, as she badgered the CNN anchor about “hosting people… all the time who call my husband and me Nazi,” a claim Phillip adamantly denied.
“Are you OK with Nick Fuentes?” Phillip asked her, referring to the neo-Nazi movement leader Tucker Carlson recently platformed on his show.
“If Nick Fuentes wants to be able to speak freely in our country, he has every right to do so,” Miller responded, yet seconds later she angrily recounted how commentator Jennifer Welch called her husband a “Jewish Nazi” and blamed Phillip for not pushing back hard enough.
“That is no different than Nick Fuentes going on the Tucker Carlson show,” Miller said, equating the liberal podcaster to a longtime white supremacist and Holocaust denier.
Flabbergasted, Phillip attempted to set the record straight: “Wait, hold on,” she responded. “How is it similar? It’s not remotely similar at all. Nick Fuentes sits around and says that he likes Hitler. How is that similar?”
“If someone comes on this show and says, I love Hitler, and I admire what he did, they would never — first of all, I would never invite them on the show, and they would never be invited back,” Phillip said.
But Miller could not be swayed, “It’s not different, Abby, it’s not.” The interview ended with Phillip cutting through the chaos and posing a pointed question to Republicans: Does the party care if a prominent voice like Tucker Carlson is platforming a neo-Nazi? “At the end of the day, that is what the Republican party has to decide.”