Nazi Richard Spencer Hails SOTU Co-Author Stephen Miller For Making Trump More Extreme On Immigration

The SPLC reports:

Richard Spencer — a figurehead for the white nationalist “alt-right” — praised Trump’s senior policy advisor Stephen Miller for pushing the president further to the right on immigration.

Speaking on his “Alt-Right” podcast on January 24, Spencer stated, “Stephen Miller is singularly responsible for the fact that A: DACA isn’t just some heartwarming bill that he signs in the Rose Garden and gets nothing for, that its actually part of a deal. And B: that we’re even talking about chain migration.” Spencer later went on to say, that the topic of family reunification, decried by nativist groups as “chain migration,” “has never been in mainstream discourse in my memory and it has certainly never been part of a policy deal, and Stephen Miller deserves credit for that.”

Miller and Spencer have a history. Both attended Duke University in the mid 2000s while Miller was an undergrad and Spencer was pursuing a PhD. In a December 2016 interview with Mother Jones, Spencer admitted that he wanted to keep his relationship with Miller quiet.

“I knew [Miller] very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this, because I don’t want to harm Trump.” In another interview with Vanity Fair six months later, Spencer was more open, claiming that he mentored Miller, calling him “ballsy,” before adding “But I do think that Stephen probably would’ve ended up exactly more or less where he is today whether he had met me or not.”