U.S President Donald Trump has attended the wedding of his top aide on immigration and national security. 34-year-old Stephen Miller married Vice President Mike Pence’s spokeswoman Katie Rose Waldman, 28, at a ceremony in the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC on Sunday evening. His influence over the president has triggered controversy throughout his time in the White House. A White House statement said, “The President is at Trump International Hotel for the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Miller”. The event marked the end of a day for the president which saw him travel from his Mar a Lago golf resort, to the Dayton 500 speedway race.
Miller has maintained a presence in Trump’s inner circle since his electoral campaign. He has been behind some of the president’s most hard-line policy decisions, especially when it comes to immigration. He is understood to have pushed for the policy that has seen children separated from their parents at the southern border, while also assisting in the formation of the president’s travel ban, which initially attempted to restrict travel from seven majority Muslim countries. His wedding came just days after prominent Democratic officials called for him to be removed from the West Wing after it was revealed he had sought to advance white supremacist conspiracy theories while operating in politics.
The former presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Democratic representative for Texas Joaquin Castro brought forward a resolution on 13 February in the U.S Congress condemning Miller and calling for his resignation. Harris said in a statement, “Stephen Miller is the hateful force behind the cruel and xenophobic policies that have defined the Trump administration. His white supremacist, anti-immigrant ideology has no place in our country, let alone the White House. I’m proud to lead this effort on behalf of immigrant families in California and throughout the country”. Castro said, “Americans, and in particular the Latino community, will never forget it was President Trump and Stephen Miller’s hateful rhetoric that helped inspire the deadly attack in El Paso where 22 individuals were killed for being Latino”.