Max Miller Just Made Everything Worse
And we thought we saw it all. Nope! Not even close.
Well, holy shit, my fellow Angry Democrats.
Rep. Max Miller went live this morning at 10 a.m. to beat the allegations against him, explain away the allegations made by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and tell everyone why he should remain in Congress.
It did not go well.
Actually, that is being generous. It was an absolute political malpractice masterclass. Miller released a video and a treasure trove of documents, recordings, and text messages for his political opposition to spend the next three months cutting apart.
It showed that he has absolutely no common fucking sense and no clue what the hell he is doing.
This is not going to end well for Max Miller.
And it shouldn’t.
Before getting into this, I want to be clear about something: these are allegations. Miller denies abusing his ex-wife or daughter. He has not been convicted of these accusations, and the child-services investigation into his daughter’s broken collarbone was reportedly unsubstantiated, meaning investigators did not find enough evidence to establish neglect or abuse.
Allegations are not proof. Pictures of red skin and bruising are not, by themselves, proof of how those injuries occurred.
But due diligence does not mean ignoring a pattern of accusations spanning nearly two decades. It means looking at what has been alleged, what has been documented, what Miller admits, what he denies, and whether this person is capable of representing Ohio’s 7th Congressional District while his personal life is exploding all over the internet.
These Allegations Are Nothing New
The accusations surrounding Max Miller did not begin with his divorce.
Politico reported in 2021 that three people said Miller pushed a girl out of his room while in high school after she resisted his attempts to touch her, causing her to fall down a flight of stairs. Miller categorically denied that happened. When Mother Jones contacted the woman years later, she called it “one of the more traumatic nights” of her life.
Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham also accused Miller of becoming physically abusive during their relationship. According to reporting at the time, she alleged that Miller pushed her against a wall and slapped her after she confronted him about cheating.
Miller denied Grisham’s accusations and sued her for defamation. The lawsuit was later dropped after the two reached a confidential settlement. Grisham has since filed another lawsuit alleging Miller violated that agreement with his more recent public comments.
Grisham also wrote that she told people around Donald Trump that the relationship had become abusive and that they did not seem to care. As she wrote in The Washington Post, the Trumps knew when the relationship had turned abusive and “didn’t seem to care.”
I reached out to Grisham myself. She told me she could not speak on the record because of the legal restrictions surrounding the case, although she did speak with me privately.
Now we have accusations from Emily Moreno, Miller’s ex-wife and the daughter of Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno.
Emily has accused Miller of throwing hot water at her, shoving her into a wall, putting a loaded gun to her head, using drugs, and engaging in aggressive and demeaning behavior. Their two-year-old daughter later suffered a broken collarbone under circumstances neither parent could explain. Emily reportedly told police that her daughter had said, “Daddy’s house is scary.”
Again, Miller denies the allegations. The cause of the child’s broken collarbone has not been established. Nobody should say Miller broke his daughter’s collarbone as if a court has proven that he did.
But what the actual fuck are we doing here?
We now have multiple women, across different periods of Miller’s life, describing accusations of aggressive or violent behavior. Due diligence does not require us to convict Miller ourselves. It does require us to ask whether this pattern is acceptable in someone serving in Congress.
Miller’s Own Water Recording Makes Him Look Worse
Miller released audio that he apparently believes clears him.
It does not.
In one recording, Emily says Miller poured steaming hot water on her. Miller does not respond by saying nothing involving water ever happened. Instead, he argues about intent, temperature, and whether the incident was playful.
“It was never done to hurt you, and you know that.”
He says the faucet could not produce boiling water and compares it to standing under a hot shower. He says he and his attorneys tested the water temperature because he anticipated that she would raise the allegation.
Gaslighting 101!
Miller’s defense appears to just be that something involving hot water happened, it simply was not intended to hurt her.
That is not the clean denial Miller seems to believe it is.
He calls it a “playful incident.” She says it was not playful.
The question is no longer only whether an incident happened. It is what happened, how hot the water was, why it happened, whether she was injured, and whether Miller is minimizing something serious by calling it playful.
That is not exoneration. That is a fucking evidentiary argument over the temperature of the water.
But She Cooked Me Dinner
Another part of Miller’s defense is that Emily continued interacting with him after an alleged assault.
Miller says Ring doorbell footage shows Emily leaving his home calmly with their daughter. He says she did not immediately call police or go to the hospital. He says she went to a child’s birthday party, spoke with him about their daughter’s medical procedure, offered to cook him empanadas six days later, invited him and his girlfriend to a playground, and wrote that they were in a “friendlier place.”
Then he asks:
“If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?”
I do not know, Max. Maybe.
People remain in contact with former partners after alleged abuse all the time, especially when they share custody of a two-year-old child. People act normally because they are scared, confused, trying to de-escalate a situation, trying to co-parent, or trying to keep their lives from completely exploding.
Her making empanadas does not prove an assault happened. It also does not prove that one did not happen.
The fact that Emily cooked dinner six days later is not the Perry Mason moment Max thinks it is.
“What do you mean I assaulted her? She made me empanadas.”
What the fuck does that have to do with anything?
Then There Are the Needles
Miller also released an audio recording involving allegations of drug use.
In the recording, Emily says she went into his backpack because she believed he had a drug problem. She says it began with weed and that she later found needles near his bed or in a bedroom drawer.
Miller denies that the needles belonged to him. He repeatedly says he has never had needles in his bedroom drawer and offers to be tested for drugs.
That is his denial, and it should be included.
But the recording does not establish whose needles they were, whether the photograph Emily says she took exists, or whether Miller was using injectable drugs. It captures one person making an allegation and Miller denying it.
Once again, releasing it publicly does not resolve anything. It simply gives voters another disturbing argument between a congressman and his former wife to listen to on the internet.
Max apparently looked at this recording and thought, “Yes, this will help.”
Political malpractice.
Bernie Moreno Finally Found His Balls
For years, SENATOR Bernie Moreno remained publicly silent while allegations involving his daughter and former son-in-law continued piling up.
When I was running for Congress in 2024, I wondered whether Bernie would eventually throw Miller under the bus.
He did not.
Why?
Because Bernie Moreno was a complete fucking wuss.
But after watching Miller’s unhinged livestream, Bernie finally found his balls.
Maybe they (his balls) were at the house of whoever created that old Adult Friend Finder profile using his work email. The Associated Press confirmed that somebody with access to Moreno’s account created a profile seeking encounters with men. And by encounters I mean sex. And by with men, I mean Bernie Moreno having sex with men. Moreno’s lawyer said an intern created it as a prank, and the AP could not independently determine who actually made it.
Fine. Maybe it was the intern. Maybe it was Bernie. Maybe it was Batman.
I do not care.
And Bernie, let me extend an olive branch here: Democrats do not care if somebody is gay, straight, bisexual, or anything else. Nobody is going to burn in hell for rubbing another man’s Johnson.
What I care about is that it took you this long to speak publicly while your daughter was making allegations this serious.
After Miller’s livestream, Moreno released a blistering statement saying the past two years had been “pure hell” for his family. He accused Miller of “increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior,” said Miller needs “serious psychological help,” called him a danger to his daughter, and said he holds his breath whenever Miller has custody of his granddaughter.
Moreno concluded:
“If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives.”
Bernie Moreno is not some liberal activist. He is a Republican senator, a Trump ally, Miller’s former father-in-law, and the grandfather of the child at the center of this nightmare. He is now publicly calling on Miller to leave Congress.
That does not legally prove Emily’s allegations.
But holy shit, it should get everyone’s attention.
Republicans Are Politically Insane if They Keep Him
If Donald Trump and Republican leaders do not call for Miller’s immediate resignation, then they are either completely abhorrent in what they are willing to tolerate or too politically stupid to understand what is happening.
Maybe both.
A Republican-commissioned poll conducted July 29 and 30 reportedly showed Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter leading Miller 44 percent to 39 percent, with 16 percent unsure. Miller’s favorability was reportedly just 25 percent, while 41 percent viewed him unfavorably.
Yes, that is Republican polling.
A previous Democratic internal poll had Miller leading by only one point, 44 percent to 43 percent. That was already a statistical tie in a district Trump won by double digits in 2024.
Now the Republican poll has Max losing by five.
What a crash and burn.
For comparison, Miller’s favorability in that Republican poll is significantly worse than Trump’s approval in the district. Max Miller has somehow managed to become less popular than Donald Trump in a Republican-leaning district.
That takes work. Real hard work. I said “hard”… calm down Senator Moreno
From a purely partisan Democratic perspective, we should want Max to remain in the race. Keep him right there. Put him on every television station. Let him keep releasing recordings. Let him hold another livestream. Maybe next time he can bring a whiteboard and diagram the exact temperature of his kitchen faucet.
This is a flippable district. Always has been.
But from the standpoint of responsible government, basic ethics, and the dignity of Congress, Miller should have been gone yesterday.
Republicans still have an opportunity to replace him with a normal Republican who could probably retain the seat. If Trump cares about keeping control of the House, this should be a simple political decision.
Call Max and tell him to get the fuck out.
Max Miller Has Barely Represented Us Anyway
These allegations and the legal battles surrounding them are now an enormous distraction.
Miller is fighting his ex-wife, his former father-in-law, Stephanie Grisham, attorneys, reporters, political opponents, and apparently anyone else who walks within ten feet of an Ohio courthouse.
I do not believe anyone can be fully focused on legislation, constituents, and the geopolitical disaster unfolding around us while doing all of that.
To be perfectly honest, I have been criticizing Miller for barely showing up for constituents long before this.
He has avoided traditional town halls. He has often blamed security concerns and antisemitism, which is absolutely on the rise and should be taken seriously. But he also seems terrified of standing in front of ordinary Republicans, Democrats, and independents and answering for his record.
We see him occasionally at a homecoming festival or community event when reelection comes around. Spotting Max Miller in the district is like Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow.
He crawls out of his hole, sees his shadow, shakes a few hands, and announces two more years of elected office.
Then he disappears again.
Now he is even more distracted. Instead of discussing legislation, healthcare, inflation, war, immigration, the economy, or what he has actually accomplished, he is publicly arguing that his faucet does not get hot enough to burn someone.
This is not representation.
Think About the Child
There is also a two-year-old girl trapped in the middle of all of this.
Nobody wants to grow up knowing the entire internet can search for recordings, allegations, photographs, police reports, court documents, and public accusations about their parents.
That shit never disappears.
Miller says he is defending himself. Emily says she is protecting herself and her daughter. Bernie says he is speaking out because he fears for his family.
Whatever the adults believe they are accomplishing, the child will eventually inherit every ugly piece of it.
By making this as public as it has become, there is almost no way for this to be healthy for her later.
That alone should cause everyone involved to step back and ask what the fuck they are doing.
Go Be Rich, Max
Max Miller needs to resign.
Not because it is the politically best outcome for Democrats. It is not. The politically best outcome for Democrats is for Max to remain on the ballot, keep imploding, and hand Brian Poindexter a Republican district.
He should resign because it is the right thing for Congress, the district, the country, and his daughter.
And as D.J. Byrnes The Rooster says, Just Go be rich, Max.
Seriously.
One current estimate places Miller’s net worth at roughly $12 million. He has trusts, investments, and valuable property. He does not need this job.
Go drive around the country. Camp a little. Smoke some weed, assuming it is legal where you are. Have a few drinks, preferably after handing over the car keys. Get on Adult Friend Finder with Bernie and go get wild with the boys. Maybe the two of you can finally reconnect over something.
I do not know.
But politics is not for you.
You make bad choices. You exercise terrible political judgment. Your personal life is completely messed up, and now you are dragging your family, your constituents, and the institution of Congress through it.
Go get help.
Go take care of your family.
Go get your shit together.
And Go be rich, brother.
Stay Angry.
For Max, in the words of Tay Tay. “It’s me. Hi! I’m the problem it’s me.”