It was anything but a tame afternoon interview when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller with CNN’s Boris Sanchez on Monday. What was supposed to be a discussion on federal response tactics quickly spiraled into a shouting match, with Miller raising his voice and firing back accusations — and at one point, literally yelling, “Wow, you walked right into that one!”
The tension broke wide open when Sanchez pressed Miller on the administration’s handling of protests in Oregon — and more pointedly, why similar federal force wasn’t being considered in places like Dallas, where a sniper recently attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
Miller did not take the question lightly.
“Because the Dallas Police Department and the governor of Texas — wow, you walked right into that one — have responded to every call for assistance and help,” Miller shot back, clearly agitated. “They gave a stand-down order in Chicago, and they gave a stand-down order in Portland. Do you realize that there is 11,000 federal law enforcement officers in Oregon? That’s larger than the size of the FBI; local and state police are resourced to deal with this kind of riotous assembly, but they have refused. They’ve been given a stand-down order. So they’ve arrested some 70 people since June.”
The exchange only escalated from there.
Miller painted a dire picture of what he called an “orchestrated campaign of terrorism and violence against ICE officers,” citing the Dallas incident and alleging that federal agents’ families are being targeted.
“And they’re physically attacking them in the street each and every day,” Miller claimed. “And yet, shamefully, the mayor and governor in Portland and Oregon have refused to render aid, leaving ICE officers to street fight every single night against these terrorists.”
It wasn’t just rhetoric. Miller suggested the administration was well within its rights to federalize the National Guard, a move that would bypass local authority and push federal law enforcement deeper into American cities.
Sanchez, refusing to let the claim slide, challenged Miller on the use of the term “domestic terrorism” — and asked whether anyone had actually been charged under those statutes.
“You are going to charge someone with terrorism?” Sanchez asked.
“I’d like to,” Miller responded bluntly, before conceding there were no current terrorism charges underway.
The conversation laid bare the political fault lines over federal force, protest management, and who gets to define what constitutes a terrorist threat. But perhaps most jarring was the combative posture Miller brought to the table — less like a government official and more like a political brawler, ready to punch through the camera lens.
Watch the exchange below:
