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‘I'm Sick Of Stupid!’: GOP Senator Excoriates Stephen Miller Over Greenland

WASHINGTON ― Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) condemned comments made by President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller about Greenland on Wednesday, calling them “stupid,” “amateurish” and “absurd.”

“Some people around here call me cranky. You know what makes me cranky? Stupid,” Tillis said in a fiery speech on the Senate floor. “What makes me cranky is when people don’t do their homework.”

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“I’m sick of stupid,” he added. “The amateurs who said it’s a good idea [to invade Greenland] should lose their jobs.”

Miller told CNN earlier this week that Greenland belongs to the United States, predicting that no one would oppose the U.S. militarily should it stake a claim to the semiautonomous territory that belongs to Denmark, a NATO ally.

Tillis’ remarks amount to a direct attack on a presidential aide so powerful he’s often referred to as Trump’s prime minister and a sharp escalation in the retiring senator’s occasional criticisms of the administration.

While Miller is known for his staunch opposition to both legal and illegal immigration and ties to the far right, he has emerged in Trump’s second term as one of the president’s most trusted aides with influence over seemingly every aspect of both foreign and domestic policy.

“Nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller told the outlet, sparking alarms in Denmark.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN.

Tillis took issue with Miller’s comments, saying he inappropriately presented that view as belonging to the entirety of the U.S. government instead of the president. He said that Denmark is one of the closest allies of the U.S., noting it was among the first to stand with us when NATO invoked Article 5 following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“You don’t speak on behalf of this U.S. senator or the Congress,” Tillis said, dismissing Miller’s words as “something a deputy chief of staff thought was a cute thing to say on TV.”

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The North Carolina Republican helps chair the U.S. Senate NATO Observer Group, which has expressed support for the territorial integrity of Denmark.

“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Tillis said in a statement alongside Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who also chairs the group, on Tuesday. “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend.”

Republicans are, for the most part, balking at the Trump administration’s threats to take Greenland by force, if necessary.

“Threats and intimidation by U.S. officials over American ownership of Greenland are as unseemly as they are counterproductive,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement on Wednesday. “And the use of force to seize the sovereign democratic territory of one of America’s most loyal and capable allies would be an especially catastrophic act of strategic self-harm to America and its global influence.”