Stephen Miller Has Meltdown When Asked To Back Up Crime Claim

Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller had an on-camera meltdown after being asked by a journalist to back up questionable claims he was making about Venezuela’s crime rate, video of the episode posted to social media shows.

The four-minute video shows an emotional Miller yelling at NTN24 reporter José María del Pino on Tuesday after del Pino questioned Miller over his claims that Venezuela has become safer than the United States because its convicts are now all in the U.S.

Miller also repeated a since-debunked story that a Venezuelan gang has taken over Colorado apartment complexes.

“The crime rate in Venezuela is down, I believe, a little bit over 60% over the last several years,” Miller tells the reporters. Trump has made a similar claim.

Del Pino then interrupts him to ask if he is trusting official crime figures from Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, whose office is not known for releasing accurate information.

“Let’s put it this way, if you’re a dictator of a poor country with a high crime rate, wouldn’t you send your criminals to our open border?” Miller answers.

“That wasn’t my question. Are you trusting the figures of the dictatorship? Those are Maduro numbers,” Del Pino responds.

This back-and-forth exchange goes on for more than a minute — with Del Pino repeatedly asking him to clarify his source for the numbers — before Miller erupts.

“I am trusting the fact that Kamala Harris is letting illegal immigrants into this country who are raping and murdering children,” Miller yells back.

“I have been very respectful. Why are you yelling?” the reporter asks. “I was just asking for figures, and you have not replied to me about those figures.”

Miller eventually walks off camera without answering the reporter’s question.

Though those independently studying Venezuela’s crime rates have reported a drop in violent crime in recent years, it’s not at the extraordinary levels Miller and Trump have claimed, nor for the reasons they give.

InSight Crime, a think tank focused on crime and security in the Americas, has reported that Venezuela’s economic instability has caused crime to drop due to fewer criminal opportunities being available. Criminal gangs have also migrated to other Latin American countries.

Roberto Briceño-León, the founder and director of the local crime monitoring Venezuelan Violence Observatory, also told Factcheck.com in June that there’s no evidence that the Venezuelan government is opening its jails and shipping convicts to the U.S. “or any other country.”

Maduro’s government has attributed the drop in crime to its own security forces cracking down on criminal groups.