The Trump administration’s senior adviser Stephen Miller reportedly enjoyed debating CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta at the press briefing Wednesday.
Miller publicly addressed reporters for the first time at an official White House briefing, getting into a heated debate with Acosta for stereotyping English-speaking immigrants as coming from either Australia or Great Britain. Miller “had a blast” debating Acosta, a senior White House official told The Daily Beast.
Miller took questions from reporters after President Donald Trump came out in support of a Senate bill that would revamp the immigration system into a merit-based system that prioritizes high-skilled, English-speaking immigrants.
Acosta tried to lecture Miller on immigration issues, where he appeared to argue that the Statue of Liberty somehow bans America from prioritizing high-skilled immigrants.
“What you’re proposing, or what the president’s proposing here, does not sound like it’s in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration,” Acosta said. “The Statue of Liberty says, ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,’ it doesn’t say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer. Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you’re telling them, you have to speak English when they get here?”
“Well, first of all, right now, it’s a requirement that to be naturalized you have to speak English, so the notion that speaking English wouldn’t be a part of immigration systems would be very ahistorical,” Miller responded.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to White House officials about Miller’s reaction to the White House briefing, but did not receive a comment in time for publication.
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