Avowed America Firster Stephen Miller may seem like one of the world’s most unlikely Trekkies, but the fanboy Deputy White House Chief of Staff has some advice for the just debuted Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
Turns out Miller, one of the primary proponents of the Trump administration’s often cruel, violent and seemingly indiscriminate immigration policy, also has a soft spot for at least one non-citizen who has lived in America for decades. Yep, that’s you William Shatner!
In a post today on Elon Musk’s X, Miller added his voice to the burgeoning MAGA backlash against Paramount+‘s Gaia Violo-created series. However, overlooking the optimistic humanism and multiculturalism that have long fueled the Gene Roddenberry-created franchise, Miller unironically offered up some solutions that he believes will stop the wokification of the franchise famously willing to “go where no man has gone before.”
A mash-up of classic Trek sci-fi adventurism, inclusion, and an old fashioned coming of age drama, the 32nd century set Starfleet Academy launched on the David Ellison-owned Paramount+ today, tragedy or not. With production on a second season of the Holly Hunter and Tig Notaro-led ST: SF already underway, two episodes of Season 1 hit the streamer Thursday with new shows of the Alex Kurtzman EP’d series out every week until March 15.
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Perhaps Miller (who seems more aligned with Next Generation’s Borg than the Original Series) can’t help but have an issue with a trio of women in charge. That would be on brand. Yet, but the Santa Monica-raised Republican really steps in it with the suggestion that William Shatner to save Starfleet.
Not because the first Kirk (who also portrayed TJ Hooker and Boston Legal‘s legendary conservative Denny Crane, as well as put out a few albums over the years) isn’t a true talent and force, which Shatner is. (He directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier for Paramount.) However, for all his years in the U.S. on the big and small screen, William Shanter is a self-declared “proud Canadian” who has never taken American citizenship.
In fact, as Miller may have forgotten, a sarcastic Shanter was in the forefront last year of pushback against Donald Trump‘s idea of making the Great North into the U.S.’s 51st state.
“To all of you wonderfully dear naive & gullible types out there whom I love so much… If you are angry about my posts on the US becoming a Canadian province: imagine how Canadians felt when an actual leader of a friendly neighbouring country floated that idea across the border,” the 94-year-old double Emmy winner posted back in mid-2025. “Doesn’t feel good, does it? Learn a lesson from it,” Montreal-born Shatner added, in language similar to that he used to scorch Fox News’ Jesse Waters on his May 6 show.
That’s seems a long way from Shatner’s 2017 remarks to avoid getting in Trump’s crosshairs. “I consider myself a guest here,” the actor said nine years ago. “I won’t do anything that might get me deported.”
Now, it turns out resistance isn’t so futile after all.