Another Trump Adviser Is Under Scrutiny

Steve Bannon has received much of the credit in the media for President Donald Trump's executive order travel and immigration ban, that specifically targets seven Muslim-majority countries. But there's another Trump advisor who should get some of the credit. Meet Trump advisor Stephen Miller. According to a CNN report, Miller ran a campaign criticized as Islamphobic in college while studying at Duke University. Miller did not respond to CNN's request for comment on the report.

Miller has been arguably most famous as Trump's doom-and-gloom speechwriter. While a student at Duke University, Miller was active in running the Terrorism Awareness Project. CNN reported that the group's goals, according to Miller himself was to educate about the "risk" of "Islamofascism" and it therefore tried to hold events like "Islamofascism Awareness Week" at schools across the country. CNN found literature from the group that is up on the Internet archive.

Miller was the campus coordinator of the Terrorism Awareness Project. According to the documents found on the archived website for the group, here was its stated goal at the time:

The purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat. Nothing could be more politically incorrect than to point this out. But nothing could be more important for American students to hear.

The Terrorism Awareness Project also attacked what it perceived as the views of the progressive left in America, especially as it manifested on college campuses. The group stated in materials that it is the "curriculum of the left, which teaches that America is the enemy in the war on terror and the terrorists are 'freedom fighters,' whom progressives should support." Miller warned of an "upside-down world" where America was the villain and "Jihadists the victims."

Spencer and Miller worked together on an attempt to run an advertising campaign in college papers across the country, CNN reported, though Spencer said he did not recall actually working on them. Many newspapers refused to run ads from the group they had designed because of language like: "Jihad is not about American policy towards Israel. Jihad is not about Israel’s policy towards Palestinians. It is about the global rule of radical Islam."

Whether Miller's controversial views will even be noticed in the midst of the Michael Flynn resignation scandal and the many other issues plaguing the Trump campaign, remains to be seen.