Katie Miller, who works for Elon Musk while married to a top Donald Trump aide, is in a “tricky situation” amid the two men’s messy breakup, her friends told The Wall Street Journal.
Miller, 33, is the wife of Stephen Miller, 39, the high-profile staffer who masterminded Trump’s mass deportation initiative. Having risen through the White House ranks herself to become a top DOGE aide, Musk took Miller with him to work in the private sector upon his exit from government—and then promptly torpedoed his relationship with Trump and his supporters.
(Stephen Miller is among those who have called out Musk in recent days.)
ADVERTISEMENT
Musk and Trump have been exchanging blows since Thursday. Musk alleged that Trump was implicated by government files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, while Trump fired back that Musk’s drug use might be responsible for his behavior. At some point during the battle, Musk unfollowed Miller’s husband.
The ugly spat has cooled off—but some commentators predict it’s far from over.
Friends of Miller, who declined to speak to the Journal herself, told the paper that she has “conflicting interests,” which has made the breakup especially tough for her.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
This isn’t the first time Miller has found herself torn between Musk and Trump. Insiders told the Journal that tensions flared on occasions when senior White House staffers didn’t feel that Miller was doing enough to push Musk to operate in step with the rest of the administration.
For many White House aides, Miller was the main point of contact for Musk and his team, but they still felt she was not sharing enough information about what the tech billionaire was doing, the Journal reported.
Miller told some people that she was struggling to keep up with the pace of Musk’s eccentric behavior as he gutted agencies and slashed funding.
Some White House aides blamed her for delivering updates from DOGE with inaccurate intel—like a claim, later parroted by Trump, that the government had sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza.
Miller signed onto the Trump administration during the president’s first term. She met her husband while working at the Department of Homeland Security. Trump attended their February 2020 wedding, which took place at the president’s hotel in Washington D.C.
Later, Miller joined Vice President Mike Pence’s office. After the January 2021 insurrection, when Trump turned on Pence for refusing to impede the certification of the 2020 election results, Miller, like now, found herself backed into a corner.
While her husband stayed with Trump, Miller worked for Pence’s post-presidency. But when Trump began to attack Pence after leaving office, the ex-VP’s advisers decided the situation was “untenable,” and Miller left, per the Journal.
Last summer, she emerged as an effective liaison between Musk and the Trump campaign. When Musk’s DOGE was announced before Trump came into office, she was one of the first employees to be named.
Before Trump’s second term, Miller had cultivated a reputation for being a tough, fiery, and vocal advocate of Trump’s platform.
If there was any doubt that Miller is unafraid to take the road less traveled, insiders told the Journal that she has a tattoo on the inside of her lip that says “YOLO”—“you only live once.”
