Stephen Miller’s Religious Beliefs Resurface as Minneapolis Shooting Claims Face Scrutiny

Stephen Miller doesn’t talk about faith like a politician on a campaign stop. But his religion keeps coming up anyway — because he’s one of the most vocal architects of Donald Trump-era immigration policy.

Now, the conversation is getting louder again. Stephen Miller is facing backlash over how the Trump administration described — then quietly walked back — key claims in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Stephen is Jewish. The Guardian describes him as the son of Jewish parents who grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has directly quoted him referring to himself as “a Jew.”

“I think the fact that they are continuing to accuse a Jew of being a white nationalist is inherently anti-Semitic,” Stephen said in 2019. He added, “To say to a Jewish person that you hold the very ideology that has persecuted your own family is so profoundly inappropriate.”

When he has spoken publicly about his Jewish identity, it has often been in the context of defending himself from accusations that he promoted white nationalist ideas.

“Not only am I not anything of the sort, but I find the accusation to be profoundly offensive and completely outrageous,” he said during a Fox Business interview. “It is an attempt on the part of the Democratic Party to attack and demonize a Jewish staffer. And make no mistake, there is a deep vein of anti-Semitism that is running through today’s Democratic Party.”

Stephen’s family story is one reason this “religion” question keeps popping up. In 2018, his maternal uncle, David S. Glosser, publicly criticized him in a Politico column, calling him an “immigration hypocrite” and pointing to their Jewish family’s immigration history. David also said policies Stephen championed, like the travel ban and family separations, clashed with the kind of refuge their relatives once needed to survive.

“If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out,” David wrote. Adding, “Acting for so long in the theater of right-wing politics, Stephen and Trump may have become numb to the resultant human tragedy and blind to the hypocrisy of their policy decisions.”

Stephen’s name is in the middle of the Minneapolis controversy because of what he said immediately after Alex Pretti died — and what he said after video and preliminary findings undercut early claims. After the shooting, ABC News reports Stephen publicly described Alex as a “domestic terrorist,” language that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem echoed.

That’s the contradiction folks point to. A top White House adviser helped label the victim as a violent threat, then later suggested the operational setup may have been wrong. The White House also tried to distance Donald Trump from Noem and other officials after statements that described Alex as a “would-be assassin.”