Were there moments that you missed? Anything that happened that’s on the cutting room floor?
Soulless Anti-Immigration Troll Stephen Miller Was Nervous About Getting His Photo Taken
The Vanity Fair photographer behind the century’s most-talked-about portraits told the Washington Post that Miller was “perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session.”
Photo: Getty Images Politics
The only thing better than Susie Wiles’ unfiltered interview with Vanity Fair in which she hilariously insulted many of her most evil and infamous colleagues, are the very close-up and very unforgiving portraits of said evil and infamous colleagues. Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks exhausted and seconds away from a mental breakdown; Vice President JD Vance looks like a bloated sleep paralysis demon; and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt‘s lip filler injections stand out like a cluster of red wine stains.
Most people, myself included, love the photos, though MAGA is obviously pissed. But the photographer, Christopher Anderson, has been photographing his subjects like this for years, even publishing a coffee table book of political figures (across the political spectrum) in 2014 called Stump. He also previously photographed Trump (in the same close-up style) for the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 2017—so any MAGA conspiracy theories about this all being a deep-state job to humiliate Trumpworld don’t really hold up.
The Washington Post did a quick phone interview with Anderson on Wednesday about the response to his Pulitzer-worthy photographs. He talked about how he was surprised people think he should have photoshopped the images because and in response to Leavitt’s very noticeable lip injections, he said, “I didn’t put the injection sites on her.”
He also offered an amusing little story of his interactions with anti-immigration ghoul and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Per the Post:
I don’t think there’s anything I missed that I wish I’d gotten. I’ll give you a little anecdote: Stephen Miller was perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session. He asked me, “Should I smile or not smile?” and I said, “How would you want to be portrayed?” We agreed that we would do a bit of both. And then when we were finished, he comes up to metoshakemy hand and say goodbye. And he says to me, “You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.” And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you do, too.”
I was surprised to read that Miller knows what a smile is, let alone that he seemingly was nervous about getting his photo taken. But, kind of like how a vampire hates garlic and can’t go out in the sun, I suppose when you’re a soulless troll, bright flashes and big portrait cameras are something you need to worry about.
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