Before Katie Miller was MAGA, she was MTV.\u200b\u200bThe conservative lifestyle podcaster\u2014who is married to Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump\u2019s most severe immigration policies\u2014appeared on an MTV reality show as a teenager, the Daily Beast has learned.Katie Miller, 34, was featured in the sole season of the 2008 series The Paper, which chronicled the lives of journalists at The Circuit, a student newspaper at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, a wealthy suburb in Miami, Florida.\u201cKatie was one of those people who was rumored to have joined newspaper to try and be on MTV, because none of us really knew why she was there,\u201d said Emmi Weiner, who previously served as entertainment editor at The Circuit. Set in an upscale Broward County community, the show followed power struggles among student editors as they juggled print deadlines, high school parties, and college admissions essays at a campus that today enrolls roughly 4,800 students in grades 9\u201312.Katie Miller, then Katie Waldman, regularly appeared on the 2008 MTV show “The Paper." dailymotion.com\/MTV\/dailymotion.com\/MTV Katie Miller, then Katie Waldman, came aboard as a photo editor around the time students in the affluent South Florida enclave learned that MTV cameras were gearing up to follow its high-achieving student journalists. But after she failed to click with her fellow newspaper staffers, she was passed over for a main role. \u201cShe didn\u2019t want to be friends with any of us\u2014she was just always better than everybody,\u201d Weiner said.Since she was snubbed, Miller\u2014who did not respond to requests for comment\u2014has turned against the press, frequently decrying \u201cfake news\u201d and the so-called \u201cmainstream media.\u201dMuch of The Paper has since vanished, unavailable on any streaming platform in the United States. Still, the Daily Beast identified a two-minute clip from the show featuring a teenage, ponytailed Miller wearing wire headphones she never removes. Multiple sources confirmed that the girl in the clip was the former White House aide.Miller wasn’t cast as a main or supporting character, but managed to appear in scenes throughout the short series. dailymotion.com\/MTV Seven students made up the main cast of the MTV show, with several others in supporting roles. Katie was neither, yet footage from the show prominently places her between principal cast members as deadline drama unfolds.\u201cShe was just kind of there\u2026she was so random," a former cast member, who requested anonymity, told the Daily Beast. Main cast members of MTV’s The Paper attend the show premiere at the Muvico Paradise Theater on March 27, 2008, in Davie, Florida. Jeff Daly\/Getty Images Several former classmates and castmates described Miller as \u201cinsignificant\u201d in high school\u2014an experience they said may have fueled what they characterized as her later \u201cMTV-try-hard\u201d tendencies. Because of those traits, they weren\u2019t all that shocked to learn of her engagement to the president\u2019s deputy chief of staff. \u201cShe was one of those people who will do anything to get anywhere,\u201d the castmate said.Miller, whose father was an attorney, had no shortage of examples of what to strive for among the well-heeled student body.\u201cCypress Bay was definitely one of the most impressive high schools I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d said Jason Van Brusselen, who worked on the show as a cameraman. \u201cIt was an all-American high school, in a beautiful little town of Weston, and the kids had everything they needed there.\u201dKatie Miller met her husband, Stephen, while working in the White House, a job she later left to launch a podcast that has struggled to gain an audience. Shannon Finney\/WireImage Former classmates say the one-time White House aide and former DOGE spokesperson still reminds them of her younger self\u2014particularly her penchant for on-air meltdowns. \u201cKatie liked to have her opinion heard,\u201d the cast member said. \u201cShe was argumentative but for no reason\u2014that\u2019s why it\u2019s so funny seeing all of her bits on TV now..the only thing that\u2019s changed is she\u2019s taking a [political] side.\u201dIn August 2020, Vanity Fair reported on Miller\u2019s confrontation with her high school English teacher, Simone Waite, one of the few African American faculty members at the school. Waite had been teaching Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved when the Trumper-in-training grew frustrated with her observation that much of Black Americans\u2019 history had been erased by slavery. \u201cCouldn\u2019t they just tell each other about their history?\u201d Miller reportedly asked. The disagreement escalated, and Waite ultimately suggested moving on."Katie liked to have her opinion heard," a former classmate and castmate told the Daily Beast. Facebook \/Facebook Miller later petitioned against Waite, describing the lesson as \u201cpsychologically damaging\u201d and \u201csickening.\u201d Her father was eventually called in, and it was agreed that she would no longer take Waite\u2019s class. Reflecting on the incident years later, Weiner put it bluntly: \u201cLittle a–holes grow up into big a–holes.\u201dShe later took her talents to the University of Florida, where one former student recalled her operating like a \u201chenchman\u201d after joining the ruling party in the university\u2019s student government.These days, Miller is still searching for stardom\u2014this time through her podcast, The Katie Miller Podcast. Miller, who is expecting her fourth child, announced the show after leaving the White House in May and completing a brief stint working for Elon Musk. At first, she framed the project as the \u201cconservative answer to \u2018Call Her Daddy,\u2019\u201d but critics say it\u2019s evolved into political propaganda, with the guest list largely made up of Trump A-listers. Her debut episode featured Vice President JD Vance, and she has since hosted U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, and others.Miller, then Waldman, on a high school field trip to Columbia University. Facebook \/Facebook And her early brush with journalism hasn\u2019t exactly translated into hard-hitting interviews. Katie is known to pepper high-profile guests like Vance with questions about ice cream, hot dogs, and his favorite song\u2014\u201cFade Into You\u201d by Mazzy Star. During an interview with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, her most provocative line of inquiry was which member of Trump\u2019s cabinet he would trust to babysit his kids.While episodes with prominent guests like Musk have drawn hundreds of thousands of views, Katie\u2019s typical installments\u2014such as an interview with health guru Dr. Kelly Ann\u2014attract fewer than 3,000.\u201cIt\u2019s so much harder to start your own thing than you think it is,\u201d Katie said on a podcast in November.Some former classmates said they were unsurprised by her underwhelming podcast content. \u201cShe\u2019s still the same, as in she still has no substance,\u201d a former The Paper cast member snarked. \u201cI tried to listen to the podcast for literally 5 seconds, and I\u2019d rather watch paint dry. Mind-bogglingly boring\u2014she was insignificant then and she\u2019s still insignificant now.\u201dMiller joins a long list of reality television alumni with ties to Trump\u2019s White House, including the president himself. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is also an MTV alum, while Dr. Oz\u2014now administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services\u2014rose to fame through his long-running daytime talk show.Miller\u2019s husband, Stephen, also has a partiality for performing. She revealed on a podcast in November that he has compiled an extensive catalog of his media appearances dating back to when he was 16. \u201cSomewhere to my left or right are piles of DVDs or CDs from every single radio or TV show he\u2019s ever done,\u201d she said at the time.Miller has also gushed over their \u201clove story,\u201d which sparked during meetings about the construction of Trump\u2019s border wall during his first term. \u201cWhere does all true love happen? Over border security,\u201d she joked.Meanwhile, her former classmates have jokes of their own. Weiner said that she quips to her high school friends: \u201cCan you believe like, we\u2019re sitting here, like, about to enter World War III and Katie Waldman is involved?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before Katie Miller was MAGA, she was MTV.\u200b\u200bThe conservative lifestyle podcaster\u2014who is married to Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}