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President’s Foreign Trip Has Santa Monica Ties

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Harding, Larmore
Kutcher & Kozal, LLP

By Jonathan Friedman
Associate Editor

May 19, 2017 -- When Donald Trump makes his first speech in a foreign country as president on Sunday, he will be reading the words partially written by a Santa Monica High School alumnus.

Stephen Miller, who graduated from Samohi in 2003, is the co-writer of Trump’s planned speech in Saudi Arabia, according to various media reports.

The speech topic is “the need to confront radical ideology and the president’s hopes for a peaceful vision of Islam to dominate across the world,” National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said at a press briefing earlier this week.

This topic is noteworthy because Miller is also reported to have been one of the major writers of the "travel ban" proposed by Trump shortly after he became president.

The ban would have halted travel from seven countries with mostly Muslim populations designated by the Obama Administration as “areas of concern” because of terrorist activity.

Referred to by many of its opponents as a “Muslim ban,” it is currently on hold while the federal court system reviews it.

Miller’s conservative politics and close relationship with Trump as one of his senior advisers have attracted national media attention mostly because of his unusual background of hailing from a city known worldwide as a place where liberalism thrives (“Trump Inauguration Has Strong Santa Monica Connection,” January 18, 2017).

His letter submitted to The Lookout 15 years ago when Miller was a high school junior has been widely referenced this year (“Political Correctness out of Control,” March 27, 2002).

In the letter, Miller called Samohi a place where “Osama bin Laden would feel very welcome.”

He also wrote that United States citizens “enjoy personal freedoms Islamic nations could only dream about” and complained about Samohi inviting “a Muslim leader to the school to explain the splendor of Islam.”

Unlike some of the other players in the Trump administration, Miller has remained mostly behind the scenes. His major on-camera day came in mid-February when he appeared on most of the major Sunday morning news shows.

In those appearances, Miller defended the travel ban and Trump’s controversial statements that he only lost the popular vote in the presidential election because of massive voter fraud.