Top White House aide Stephen Miller tests positive for COVID-19
Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Donald Trump, has tested positive for coronavirus, he said Tuesday.
"Over the last 5 days I have been working remotely and self-isolating, testing negative every day through yesterday. Today, I tested positive for COVID-19 and am in quarantine," Miller said in a statement.
He is the latest official caught up in an outbreak at the White House that has seen at least 10 others test positive. He's also the latest member of the president's team who prepped him for last week's presidential debate to test positive.
Of that team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and Miller have all tested positive. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign aide Jason Miller are the only other members of that debate prep team and have each tested negative in recent days.
Miller also traveled aboard Air Force One on a Minnesota campaign trip with Trump and White House aide Hope Hicks. Officials have told CNN that Hicks began feeling sick while on the flight back to Washington after a fundraiser and campaign rally in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. She isolated in a separate cabin after she began displaying symptoms.
Miller's wife, Katie Miller, is Vice President Mike Pence's communications director. She already had coronavirus several months ago and tested negative again on Tuesday morning. She traveled with Pence to Salt Lake City ahead of the vice presidential debate scheduled for Wednesday, but left the trip Tuesday out of an abundance of caution, per an official.
Devin O'Malley, Pence's press secretary, that the vice president had tested negative earlier in the day.
Stephen Miller's diagnosis is likely to fuel new scrutiny of the White House's decision to decline offers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help investigate the outbreak at the complex and to begin contact tracing of those who attended events with the President.
"The White House has plans and procedures in place that incorporate current CDC guidelines and best practices for limiting COVID-19 exposure and has established a robust contact tracing program led by the White House Medical Unit with CDC integration," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
Miller, who has become one the highest profile White House advisers in part because of his hardline immigration views, has championed the President's message that the coronavirus pandemic doesn't represent an outsized threat to the U.S.
Leading the writing team that crafted Trump's final Republican National Convention speech, Miller helped to put forward a misleading message from the president that predicted a quick resolution to the ongoing crisis using dubious claims and figures.
