Democratic Representatives Ted Lieu of California and Sarah McBride of Delaware had social media users in stitches after sharing a joint video in which they wandered around the Capitol building looking for Republicans amid the government shutdown—and managed to mock White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller over one of his sore spots.
The shutdown, which has hit its fifteenth day, stemmed from Republicans’ refusal to negotiate with Democrats over reversing Medicaid cuts and renewing key Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits set to expire this year. Republicans falsely accused Democrats of seeking to extend healthcare to undocumented immigrants.
Lieu shared a video on social media that shows him and McBride wandering the quiet halls of the Capitol, mockingly calling out for absent Republicans. “Steve Scalise, where are you?” Lieu shouts, peering behind an empty desk in the visitor center. “House Republicans, where are you?”
He then runs into McBride, who jokes that there were “far more tourists around the Capitol than House Republicans.” The pair continue their search, checking out statues and escalators along the way, until McBride notices a tiny door barely two feet tall.
She bends down to open it and quips:
“They might be meeting with Stephen Miller in here."
Lee bends down to look himself and declares:
“Nope, I don’t see any House Republicans there either.”
You can see the video below, which Lee posted with a mocking caption mentioning how he and McBride teamed up "to see if any Republicans had the common sense to come back."
The two knew what they were doing—particularly when it came to Miller, whose height has been the butt of jokes for over a week now.
In an Instagram livestream last week, New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “one of the best ways that you can dismantle a movement of insecure men is by making fun of them." She called Miller "a clown" and suggested he—the architect of President Donald Trump's immigration policies—takes out his anger on others because he's "like, 4 feet 10 inches."
Miller was later made to watch Ocasio-Cortez's remarks about him during an awkward live segment featuring him and Fox News host Laura Ingraham. At one point, he stressed that he is in fact 5'10''.
You can hear his response below.
As for the tiny door, it turns out it was one of the Capitol’s Meigs miniatures—a series of waist-high access panels designed in the 1850s by engineer Montgomery C. Meigs. After a devastating Christmas Eve fire destroyed the Library of Congress in 1851, Meigs overhauled the Capitol’s infrastructure, installing a maze of pipes and valves to improve fire safety and plumbing. The small doors provided access to those hidden systems.
The Advocate reported that the doors are "strange, charming, and, in McBride and Lieu’s video, perfectly symbolic."
People were immediately in on the joke—and mocked Miller themselves and criticized the rest of the GOP while they were at it.
The Senate last night failed for the ninth time to advance the House-passed GOP bill to fund the government and end the shutdown.
No Democrats backed the measure, leaving Republicans still five votes short of the support needed to break the impasse—a margin that has remained unchanged since the shutdown began.
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