Trump campaign spokesperson Stephen Miller shocked a CNN panel on Sunday by deflecting sexism charges against his boss with warnings about genital mutilations in the United States.
On CNN's State of the Union, host Jake Tapper asked Miller if Trump's "my wife is hotter than your wife" attack on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was "presidential."
Miller, however, tried to change the topic to crimes perpetrated undocumented immigrants.
"We get wrong what we're mad about in America!" the Trump advisor exclaimed. "We don't get mad when Americans are murdered by illegal immigrants. We don't get mad when people have their jobs taken by cheaper foreign workers her on visa programs. We don't get mad when entire cities are crushed by our trade policies that send jobs overseas."
"I understand why you want to change the subject," Tapper interrupted, pointing out that Trump "chose" to attack Cruz's wife using Twitter instead of choosing to discuss immigration.
"The political class in D.C. works itself up into a feigned indignation over things that don't really affect the lives of people," Miller charged.
"There's nothing feigned here," former RNC Communications Director Doug Heye shot back, reminding Miller that CNN's Kate Baldwin had slammed him last week for refusing to condemn the "sexism" in Trump's tweets.
"You want to get into an argument? Then we'll get into an argument!" Miller yelled. "He just accused me of standing up for sexism, and that is absolutely inappropriate!"
"I said in that interview that it is a trivial issue to be debating retweets [attacking Cruz's wife] when it is a fact you have Americans dying every single day as a result of immigration policies!" Miller continued. "Americans all over this country see their communities destroyed by uncontrolled migration."
As others on the panel tried to chime in, Miller continued to shout: "This is not a joke!"
"You want to talk about women's issues here?" he said. "Here's something we should be talking about. It is a fact, as a result of uncontrolled migration into this country -- you can look this up, this is statistics from Equality Now -- half a million girls in this country are at risk of female genital mutilation."
"Oh my god," Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden gasped. "If we actually want to fight sexism in America... the wrong way to go is Donald Trump, who judges women on their looks, who says terrible things about women in every way he could possibly do."
A Center for Disease Control report warned earlier this year that 513,000 women and girls in the U.S. could be at risk for genital mutilation based on 2012 data. In 2014, The Obama administration confirmed that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services planned to carry out a study to measure the extent of the problem in the U.S.
