'The Whole Thing Is Just Preposterous': Stephen Miller Slams Controversy Over Judge's Verbal Order

yesterday

At a press gaggle Monday, Stephen Miller defended the Trump Administration's deportations amidst controversy over a judge's order.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00full cooperation. Any further questions?

00:02Just a quick question on the difference between the written order and a verbal order.

00:05Caroline was asked about this in the briefing, and she sort of suggested that maybe the administration

00:09doesn't necessarily view these as having the same weight.

00:12Is it the administration's understanding that you would comply with the verbal order?

00:17The whole thing is just preposterous.

00:20So, as the Department of Justice has said in writing,

00:23nothing the administration did conflicted with the court order.

00:27But there's a bigger issue here, which is the court order is patently unlawful.

00:32And if we got into a place in this country where district court judges could, for example,

00:37help us do our work, could interfere and direct specific targeting or non-targeting

00:44in saying who to control territory, could direct which general on the battlefield

00:49is going to be in charge of making which decisions, could direct, for example,

00:52who we can send this military asset to this country, but not this country,

00:57could direct what intelligence we can share with Israel versus with Saudi Arabia.

01:03If a district court judge can be involved in the conduct of a reform policy,

01:08under no definition do we have a democracy in this country.

01:11I mean, not to get too philosophical, but for a long time in this country,

01:16power has been concentrated principally in two areas,

01:22the unelected bureaucracy and the unelected judiciary.

01:26And power has been increasingly concentrated in these two areas.

01:29And in the case of the hard left, the judiciary takes steps to protect the bureaucracy

01:36and that further, it shrinks the circle in which democracy is occurring.

01:41So take an example just like firing recalcitrant bureaucrats.

01:44So bureaucrats serve at the pleasure of the president.

01:46The president is elected by the American people.

01:48So you have unelected judges taking the jobs of unelected bureaucrats

01:52to pursue their own policy preferences.

01:54So when Americans vote for big shifts in policy, they're voting for the president.

01:58So we tend to think about executive power as this, well, it should be,

02:03and we ought to think about it as being a unified power.

02:07But what it's become increasingly is a severed power,

02:10and more and more of it has been accumulated in the bureaucracy.

02:13And then with unelected judges, empower the bureaucracy.

02:17So, for example, there's a large section of our bureaucracy

02:19that doesn't want to deport any of these aliens.

02:21They collude with the ACLU and the judiciary to try to keep them here in this country.

02:27So this is really about the restoration of democracy

02:30and saying that the person that's elected by the whole American people

02:33can implement these big policy shifts.

02:35Otherwise, what you have, which has unfortunately affected a lot of the Western world,

02:38is a situation where voters can't vote for the change that they want.

02:42And so this is really fundamentally about democracy.

02:45The American people said, to get these terrorist gangs the hell out of our country,

02:49the president has plenary authority under the Constitution,

02:53under the Alien Enemies Act, under the INA,

02:56under Article II powers to achieve that.

02:58And no district court judge who presides over some small,

03:03but little geography of the whole country

03:06could possibly presume to have the authority

03:08to direct the expulsion of terrorists from our soil.

03:12Who, by the way, are also here in Lincoln.

03:14Thank you, everybody.

'The Whole Thing Is Just Preposterous': Stephen Miller Slams Controversy Over Judge's Verbal Order

Category

Transcript

Recommended