From Empath to Sociopath: The Radicalization of Stephen Miller

A SPECIAL REPORT

PHOTO CAPTION: 40-year old Stephen Miller at the height of his powers as Senior Advisor to President Trump (left). 20-year old Miller at the last gay pride parade he attended in 2005.

When 18-year old Jordan Vega, in late 2003, made the life-changing choice to transition genders, he turned to close friend and ally, Stephen Miller.

“He was very understanding,” Jordan said. “And his empathy was couched in a deep practicality. He organized a GoFundMe campaign for my reassignment surgery without even telling me and raised $10,000 in less than 24 hours.”

18 years later, Vega lives happily in an undisclosed location in one of the 50 states as a social worker specializing in counseling prisoners in their gender transition journey.

But the memory of an empathetic, loving Stephen Miller still haunts her.

“The kind, thoughtful young man I remember has no place in the body of the vile, hateful monster who spews vitriol as Senior Advisor to the president,” she said.

Neighbors in the Santa Monica neighborhood where Miller grew up recall similar stories. In a twist of irony, none of them chose to go on the record, for fear of reprisal were they to speak positively about Miller’s past.

He built homeless shelters on weekends. He fed pigeons, ignoring the prominent Do Not Feed the Pigeons sign at the park.

“If doing the right thing is against the law, then the law is wrong,” he used to say, another resident recalled, wiping tears from her eyes.

HEARTBREAK TO HATRED

In 2005, Miller began courting Mexican-American beauty Camila Reyes, two years his senior. Determined to impress her family, Miller began learning Spanish. His harsh, American accent grated on the family, but even Camila’s skeptical mother, Consuela, was impressed by his dedication.

“He wrote a poem for her which he ran through Google translate. It was called El Corazón No Tiene Fronteras (“The Heart Has No Borders”). It wasn’t much of a poem, didn’t even rhyme, but it was heartfelt. I had no idea what he would later become,” she said.

On the outside, Camila and Stephen had the perfect relationship. He looked forward to raising children and educating them in a bilingual school and taking them on frequent trips to Camila’s ancestral village in Mexico. Yet, beneath the gold-plated veneer, the couple slowly grew apart.

Miller became increasingly jealous of the time Camila spent in the Mexican-American community in activities that excluded him. He kept taking her to baseball games and UFC Fights, but Camila had little interest in these sports.

The break came, when Camila cheated on him with Rafael Castillo, a 24-year old illegal immigrant from Honduras. Miller confronted Castillo, unaware of the fact that the Honduran man was a professional middle-weight boxer in his home country. It took the boxer only one halfhearted punch to knock out Miller.

When he regained consciousness three days later, Miller, along with a broken nose, had a broken worldview.

“The warm, incandescent light had gone out of his eyes,” a friend said. “It was replaced by a dead, fluorescent glare.”

Overnight, the man who once helped immigrants fill out green card applications now supported building a wall on the southern border of the United States. He deleted “La Tortura” from his playlist. He stopped recycling. He started wearing suits that looked like he was perpetually campaigning for low-level political office.

Friends and family tried to intervene. They tried antidepressants, ayahuasca retreats, and even baptism in a heated swimming pool. Nothing worked.

HATRED TO ACTIVIST

By the time he arrived in Washington, Miller had completed his metamorphosis. His handwriting, once looping and elegant, became sharp and slanted. His favorite word changed from togetherness to vetting. Once an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community, he now denied their very existence, not to mention their human rights.

“A nation that recognizes the humanity of all humans is destined to fail,” he said in a recent speech.

His family still holds out hope. “We light a candle every night,” his mother said. “We keep it near his old Spanish dictionary.”

Disassociated Press reached out to Stephen Miller’s office for comment.

“The picture painted by his so-called family, neighbors and friends bears no resemblance to the Stephen Miller we know and appreciate,” a spokesman said.

“Stephen was always committed to an English-speaking, America first policy. Any suggestion to the contrary is due to the jealousy and hatred of failed progressives who wish they had his stamina and passion for stamping out diversity,” he concluded.

As for those loser progressives, some of them are haunted by regret.

“If I had known what he would become, I would have stayed with him,” Camila Reyes said. “I’m a patriotic American and I would have gladly sacrificed my own happiness, if it meant stopping even one percent of Stephen’s hateful policies. Every time I see an ICE raid on TV, I ask myself, am I partly to blame for this?”

Miller’s old friend, Jordan Vega, concurs.

“I ask myself every day, could I have stopped all this? I just want my old friend back.”