Stephen Miller and the Democrats Are In a Battle on Social Media

United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller often ends up in the center of a lot of drama. Whether it is celebrities criticizing his demeanor and approach to foreign policy, or even members of his own family apparently calling him “the face of evil”, the man keeps making headlines for an array of different reasons. This week, the latest example arrived, in the form of a very pointed tweet from the official Democrats Twitter account.

On Wednesday, Miller quote-tweeted the Democrats’ post celebrating Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. In it, he falsely (and inexplicably) accused Talarico of being transgender, writing: “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.”

How did the Democrats account respond? In a five-word response, the account replied to Miller with: “shut up you ugly f***.”

At the time of this writing, the reply has been seen a total of 32.4 million times on X alone… and it’s safe to say that people have a lot of thoughts. Republicans are, unsurprisingly, clutching their pearls. They are upset at the notion of an official government account posting something of this nature, or are trying to throw it back into the face of… any sort of liberal niceness.

Heck, an entire separate viral tweet from @OrganizerMemes is dedicated to a screenshot of two particular quote tweets, from political activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and from the news account Libs of TikTok, being gobsmacked that “the official Democratic party” was making a post like this. The tweet is simply captioned captioned “the two cruelest people alive pearlcluching.”

Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, spoke about the tweet on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, arguing: “This is the same violent political rhetoric that is leading people to shooting up, whether it be the White House Correspondents’ Dinner or President Trump in Butler… What remains to be seen is…this is an anonymous account.” She also took to X to attempt to dox the moderator of the Democrats’ account, calling them “a sad, unhappy, female Liberal.”

“When They Go Low, We Go High?”

Others, meanwhile, are applauding the account for using that specific wording, especially in response to Miller and the weird sort of anti-trans panic that’s happening in his tweet. Some are arguing that the tweet meets the Republicans on their “level” of rhetoric, after Michelle Obama’s adage of “when they go low, we go high” has been a part of the political discourse for over a decade at this point. And some are even calling out the Republicans’ hypocrisy for spending years joking about not caring about people’s feelings, and then turning around and being upset at any profane language being thrown back at them.

As one quote-tweet from @PanasonicDX4500 so eloquently put it, “every conservative [is] grasping for a fainting couch in the quote tweets.” Their reply was accompanied by the “I can excuse” meme of Britta Perry from Community, edited to say “I can excuse executing Minnesotans in the street but I draw the line at [coarse] language from a Twitter account.” This is, obviously, a reference to the death of Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration officers earlier this year.

Honestly, the exchange between Miller and the Democrats’ account going viral, and all of the pearl-clutching reactions that have resulted from it, are unsurprising. Both Trump administrations have coincided with massive shifts in the way we engage with the Internet and social media, often in ways that feel ridiculous and unprecedented in the moment. Heck, as I’m writing this, the White House Twitter account is going viral for a lengthy post celebrating the anniversary of Harambe’s death. An argument can be made that Trump and a lot of Republicans’ brazen approach to social media is part of why he got elected in the first place, so maybe they shouldn’t throw stones in the opposite direction.

(featured image: Gage Skidmore)

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