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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
The Millers: Washington power couple straddles Trump-Musk feud
By Betsy Klein, Hadas Gold, Kristen Holmes and Jamie Gangel, CNN
Updated:
9:10 AM EDT, Sat June 7, 2025
Source: CNN
They’re the Washington couple at the center of power in the Trump
administration. They’re also straddling opposing sides of an
explosive between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.
CNN reported last week that Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller,
Trump’s deputy chief of staff, would be departing her senior role at
the White House as a top spokesperson and adviser for Elon Musk’s
Department of Government Efficiency. She was on her way to work for
Musk as he went back to running his companies, helping the tech titan
manage and arrange interviews unrelated to his time in government.
But days later, amid the smoldering ruin of Musk and Trump’s epic
meltdown on Thursday over social media, that job suddenly took on a
whole new layer.
Among the attacks both men lobbed at each other was Musk endorsing the
possibility of impeaching Trump and installing Vice President JD Vance
in his place. Trump, in turn, raised the possibility of terminating
federal contracts for Musk’s companies.
The episode has left the Millers on conflicting sides of the biggest
breakup of Trump’s second term, spawning gossip among White House
aides and rounds of speculation about how the fallout could impact the
political fortunes of one of the most powerful couples in Trump’s
Washington, where loyalty reigns.
“Everyone is talking about it,” a former Trump staffer told CNN.
Katie Miller was in Texas last week for the series of interviews Musk
held with space and technology journalists as SpaceX’s Starship had
its ninth test flight. It was there that Musk first delicately
expressed he was “disappointed” in the Republican’s domestic
policy bill in an .
Her is now a steady stream of laudatory posts about Musk and his
companies, with a banner photo of a SpaceX rocket launching into space
and a biography that says, “wife of @stephenm.” Her only social
media post on Friday was a reply with laughing emojis to an altered
photo of her husband as a Home Depot employee attached to a post about
immigration raids on the chain’s stores.
One former colleague told CNN that she will ultimately need to make a
choice.
“She has a choice between Elon and Trump, but it can’t be both,”
the administration official said.
Musk unfollowed Stephen Miller on X on Thursday, although both Millers
continued following Musk on the platform into Friday.
There are divided views on how the situation will impact Stephen
Miller’s ascendance.
Among Trump’s closest advisers, many believe he is surpassed in power
only by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, fueling speculation among some over
whether he could take over should Wiles decide to move on.
“This whole thing will definitely make that more complicated,” one
senior White House official told CNN. “Katie being paid by Elon is
not good for Stephen.”
Another senior White House official strongly pushed back on the idea
that this episode with Musk would impact Miller in any way with the
President.
“Next to Susie, Trump trusts and relies on Stephen the most,” the
official said, adding that the President and top brass were
understanding that his wife working for Musk had nothing to do with
Stephen or the current state of events.
Katie Miller declined to comment for this story.
When Stephen met Katie
Deeply connected and influential in Republican circles and at the
highest levels of government, Stephen Miller and Katie Miller (née
Waldman) met during Trump’s first term in 2018. He was a senior
adviser and speechwriter at the White House; she was on the Department
of Homeland Security’s public affairs team and on her way to becoming
then-Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director.
He developed a reputation as the architect of some of the
administration’s most hardline immigration policies, becoming an
influential and trusted aide in the Trump orbit.
She developed her own reputation as a staunch supporter of those
policies, once reflecting on a trip to the US-Mexico border as the
administration came under fire for its child separation policy.
“My family and colleagues told me that when I have kids I’ll think
about the separations differently. But I don’t think so … DHS sent
me to the border to see the separations for myself — to try to make
me more compassionate — but it didn’t work,” Miller told NBC News
journalist Jacob Soboroff in an interview for his book,
“Separated.”
The pair married at Trump’s Washington, DC, hotel in February 2020.
Trump attended the wedding.
In the four years after Trump left office, both set their sights on a
Trump return to the White House. Stephen Miller launched a conservative
nonprofit group, America First Legal Foundation, that served in part as
a prelude to the policy of Trump’s second term.
Katie Miller headed to the private sector, where she consulted a number
of major companies, including Apple. They were also raising three young
children.
Return to the White House
Stephen Miller returned to the White House in January with a vast
mandate, deeply involved in many of the president’s signature policy
initiatives and further empowered from the first term. Katie Miller
joined the administration as well, working on behalf of DOGE and Musk,
who had become a new figure in the Trump orbit after being an active
campaign surrogate and 2024 megadonor.
Like Musk, Katie Miller was working at the White House as a “Special
Government Employee,” which limits the number of days one can work
within the administration.
As their professional lives intertwined, the couple also became
personally close with Musk, socializing outside of work.
In the heat of the Thursday afternoon social media showdown, Stephen
Miller had been scheduled to appear on Larry Kudlow’s show on Fox
Business Network – an appearance that was canceled.
“We lost Mr. Miller to a meeting in the Oval Office. Perfectly
understandable. When I was in government, it would happen all the time.
We’d have to kill a TV show. You’re at the president’s beck and
call,” Kudlow said during his eponymous broadcast.
This is not the first time Trump has divided a marital relationship.
During his first term, Trump lashed out at the husband of one of his
top advisers, Kellyanne Conway. Her husband, George Conway, had been
intensely critical of Trump on social media.
“He’s a whack job. There’s no question about it. But I really
don’t know him,” Trump said at the time of George Conway. “I
think he’s doing a tremendous disservice to a wonderful wife.”
In 2023, the couple announced they were filing for divorce.
George Conway, a prolific user of Musk’s X platform and ardent
anti-Trump figure, posted dozens of times about the Trump-Musk spat.
“Does anyone have any updates on Katie Miller?” he Thursday
evening.
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