Tim Miller (political strategist)

In 2000, Miller graduated from Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora, Colorado, and in 2004, he graduated from George Washington University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. ==McCain and Bush campaigns==

A native of Littleton, Colorado, Miller started out in Republican politics as an intern working on the 1998 Colorado gubernatorial election. He later earned a bachelor's degree from the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. Miller was an Iowa staffer for John McCain in the 2008 Republican Party presidential primaries, and later served as national press secretary for the Jon Huntsman 2012 presidential campaign. After the primary, Miller joined the Republican National Committee as its liaison to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. He was hired in 2015 by former Florida governor Jeb Bush as a senior adviser to Bush's presidential exploratory committee, Right to Rise political action committee (PAC), and went on to act as the communications director for Bush's presidential campaign. During the campaign, Miller drew notice as a "vocal critic" of Donald Trump. Following a 2016 South Carolina Republican primary debate, Miller followed Trump around the spin room heckling him until Miller was "hip-checked" by Trump campaign strategist Corey Lewandowski. ==Anti-Trump advocacy==

Miller joined the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC (political action committee) following Bush's exit from the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, and then drew notice for lambasting Trump supporters with whom he appeared on-air. Following Trump's election, Miller announced that he had donated to Doug Jones, the Democratic opponent of Republican nominee and accused sex offender Roy Moore in the 2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama to fill Jeff Sessions's seat. In 2020, he co-founded the advocacy organization Republican Voters Against Trump, which sponsored television and internet advertisements featuring lifelong Republicans explaining their rationale for voting for Joe Biden instead of Trump, and served as its political director. He was included in The Washington Post 2016 list of Republicans "who hate Donald Trump the most". In November 2020, he announced he had left the Republican Party. Miller has been a member of Definers Public Affairs, an opposition research-styled consulting firm since 2016. The group circulated a research document in 2018 linking anti-Facebook activists with financier George Soros—a frequent subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories—on behalf of Facebook. As a result of the controversy, Facebook ended its relationship with Definers. ==Media career==

In February 2024, Miller replaced Charlie Sykes as host of The Bulwark Podcast. He is also an MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) contributor, a frequent guest on progressive outlet Crooked Media's Pod Save America podcast, He is a writer for The Bulwark and Rolling Stone. He has written in support of Omar Ameen, an Iraqi refugee accused by Trump of being a member of ISIS. A Rolling Stone column by Miller on seeking background comments from reluctant Republican Trump supporters elicited a widely shared quote, "There are two options, you can be on this hell ship, or you can be in the water drowning". The book details Miller's political career, analysing the rise of Trump and the motivations of Republican politicians who remained firmly loyal to the MAGA movement, and reached #2 on The New York Times non fiction list in July 2022. The book was positively received for its writing style and analysis of political changes within the post-Trump GOP during the late 2010s and early 2020s. In a review for The New York Times, Jennifer Szalai called the book "darkly funny" and praised Miller's insights into the inner workings of the Republican Party and the Washington, D.C., political scene. New York Times columnist David French wrote that it offered "painful" insights into the impact of partisanship and Trumpism on the American conservative Right. ==Views==

Prior to the 2016 election, Miller described himself as a conservative and labeled himself a "Conservative activist". Since working with The Bulwark and Trump's first election win, Miller has self-identified as both a libertarian and a "liberal millennial." Miller has compared his journey to liberalism as similar to his experience as coming out as gay. Miller has also referred to himself as "capitalist moderate neolib" in a June 2025 interview with then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, where Miller admitted that if he lived in New York City he would not rank Mamdani or then-candidate Andrew Cuomo in the first four slots of the ranked-choice ballot for the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Miller has stated that "conservatism is pretty much MAGA. I mean, some people are objecting to that, but in colloquial usage, conservatism is MAGA" and that "leftism, the stuff that I don't like about the left, is mostly defined now as progressivism or leftist or you know something to that effect or socialism. And so I think I am a liberal." Describing the Trump presidencies as fascist, Miller has called Trump a "bigoted, barmy, bargain-basement Berlusconi" and wrote in Why We Did It that "As much as you think you loathe [Trump], I loathe him infinity-to-the-nth-degree more." ==Personal life==

Miller is gay. In May 2018 he married Tyler Jameson, with whom he has an adopted daughter. He attributes his decision to take the risk of coming out in 2007 while still working on Republican campaigns, in part, to the Larry Craig scandal. He is also a fan of the Denver Nuggets. ==Books==

• Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, Harper (June 28, 2022). ==References==