Former US president Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller advocated blowing up a boat ferrying migrants with a predator drone, according to an upcoming book by a former administration official.
The book’s author, Miles Taylor, who was a Trump appointee to the Department of Homeland Security, recalled an alleged April 2018 conversation about the migrant boat that was heading toward the US.
“Tell me why can’t we use a Predator drone to obliterate that boat?” Taylor quotes Miller as having asked in the forthcoming book, “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.”
Coast Guard “Admiral [Paul] Zukunft looked nonplussed. ‘Because, Stephen, it would be against international law,’” Taylor recalls.
“I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law,” Miller allegedly shot back at “the military chief nearly 30 years his senior.”
Miller flatly denied the account, and his spokesperson told Rolling Stone magazine, which published the excerpt, “This is a complete fiction that exists only in the mind of Miles Taylor desperate to stay relevant by fabricating material for his new book.”
In this March 5, 2019, photo, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, left, talks with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, right, and her chief of staff Miles Taylor at the Republican Caucus luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Zukunft said he had “no recollection” of the exchange described by Taylor, but told Rolling Stone that he “vividly recall[ed] having a lengthy conversation with Stephen Miller regarding south-west border security in 2018.”
“To use deadly force to thwart maritime migration would be preposterous and the antithesis of our nation’s vanguard for advancing human rights,” Zukunft added.
In addition to serving as a senior adviser, Miller was a speechwriter for Trump, who was known for his extreme stance on immigration.
According to former defense secretary Mark Esper, Miller proposed securing the head of then-Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, dipping it in pig’s blood and parading it around “to warn other terrorists.”
Taylor served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, during which time he authored a New York Times column as “Anonymous,” offering an insider’s account of the Trump administration’s dysfunction.
