The Cobrasnake Beat Trump Advisor Stephen Miller in a High School Election

Earlier this week, LAist reported that party photographer extraordinaire Mark Hunter, better known as the Cobrasnake, was a high school classmate of current White House senior advisor Stephen Miller. Miller has been in the public eye recently, appearing on talk shows to defend many of President Trump’s policies, as well as continuing to assert without proof that massive voter fraud occurred in the 2016 election. Hunter and Miller attended Santa Monica High, where, in 2002, they battled in a student election. There has been some media attention around that election recently, as video has surfaced of Miller giving a controversial speech that included lines that many students considered racist. And, it turns out, Hunter’s party won that election, defeating Miller’s.

Fifteen years later, both have achieved levels of fame for such different reasons that their high school matchup takes on a surreal quality. Pitchfork asked Hunter about his memories of the staunchly right wing Miller growing up in liberal Santa Monica. Hunter declined to be interviewed, but provided the following statement:

I was friendly with Stephen Miller when we were both awkward, Jewish 7th graders at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, and I knew him at Santa Monica High School. Samohi was very diverse, which I loved, but it always seemed to bother Stephen and make him mad. At Samohi I learned how to be friends with people who are different from me and it made me a better person.


The Cobrasnake and Cobra Fitness Club have always been about inclusiveness and acceptance of all people. I’m really lucky to have so many friends who have different sexual orientations, genders, races, religions and backgrounds. It is terrible that Stephen is working with President Trump to hurt my friends and make their lives harder.



Stephen wrote a message in my yearbook. He told me to vote for Bush in ’04 and for Bush’s daughters in ’16, ’20, ’24 and ’28, and he also said that he was thankful that I always appreciated his humor. Looking back on it, I don’t think I did appreciate his humor in high school. Excluding people or rounding them up because of their backgrounds wasn’t funny then and it isn’t funny now. It’s horrible.

For more information on Hunter’s career as a photographer, explore his site. To see Miller repeatedly lie, watch him interviewed by George Stephanopoulos below: