When Salon’s Amanda Marcotte decides to sharpen her pen, she usually ends up stabbing air. Her latest target? Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff. According to Marcotte, Katie Miller’s new podcast isn’t fooling anyone. The only thing not fooling anyone here, though, is Amanda’s schtick.

Marcotte has built an entire career around sneering at conservative women, whether it’s Melania Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or now Katie Miller. The script never changes: take a woman on the Right, label her weak or sometimes dangerous, and pretend it’s journalism. It’s less analysis and more a broken record.

The Mediocrity of Amanda

Amanda fancies herself as Salon’s truth-teller, but in reality she’s just their professional eye-roll. Every column is the same formula: accuse conservatives of being complicit in some looming theocracy, pad it with buzzwords like “authoritarian” and “Christian nationalist,” and hit publish. It’s not reporting; it’s Mad Libs for the perpetually outraged.

Amanda’s Own Nothingburger

Here’s how she framed Katie Miller’s podcast:

It’s technically called “The Katie Miller Podcast,” but a better title would be “The Banality of Evil.” The premise of every interview seems to be that just because the guests are far-right authoritarians, it doesn’t mean they’re interesting. Each episode is roughly an hour of scintillating content like which sorority Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., pledged in college, or how former ESPN host Sage Steele feels about wedding planning. Even her much-discussed premiere episode, which featured a 45-minute interview with Vice President JD Vance, was a big nothingburger. The biggest news that came out of it was that Stephen Miller eats a lot of mayonnaise. – Amanda Marcotte, Salon

Cute. Except it backfires. If we’re talking about mediocrity, Amanda Marcotte has cornered the market. She calls Katie Miller’s podcast dull, but Amanda has been writing the same screed for years. Katie may be talking sororities and wedding planning, but Amanda is talking recycled talking points and ideological tantrums. At least one of those is entertaining.

AMEN! @KatieMiller says her haters and hecklers can go fly a kite.

Full episode: https://t.co/gEimFz6eGb pic.twitter.com/7GDsdzV5Fi

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) September 8, 2025

Katie Miller’s Podcast Is Doing Just Fine

Marcotte’s real issue isn’t that Katie Miller’s podcast is dull. It’s that it exists at all. For people like Amanda, conservative women are supposed to be silent, or at least invisible. When they build platforms, write books, or host podcasts, the Left panics. They immediately launch hit pieces because they fear those voices will resonate.

Take Miller’s interview with Vice President JD Vance. Marcotte dismissed it as a “big nothingburger” because the juiciest detail was that Stephen Miller eats mayonnaise. But that’s the tell. If even Marcotte can’t find a scandal to latch onto, then maybe Miller is actually running a normal, thoughtful, hour-long podcast that doesn’t rely on cheap theatrics. That, in itself, is threatening to Salon’s business model of rage clicks. And Amanda can’t stand the idea of a conservative woman producing content that everyday people actually find relatable and interesting about people in the spotlight.

Attacking the Wife, Again

Amanda couldn’t resist going after Stephen Miller by proxy. Katie is fair game, not because she said anything shocking or newsworthy, but simply because she married him. It is the oldest media trick in the book. When you cannot land a punch on the man, you smear the wife. That is not journalism. It is petty gossip with a thesaurus.

And this is not a one-off for Marcotte. Just last month she cranked out an entire column hinting that JD Vance’s marriage to his wife Usha is falling apart. No policy debate. No substance. Just cheap speculation about their relationship. Amanda does not write like a serious political analyst. She writes like a bitter tabloid gossip who has convinced herself she is saving democracy. Her beat is not politics. It is spouses. And the only thing it exposes is how unserious and small Amanda really is.

Amanda, Meet a Mirror

The irony here is that Amanda calls Katie Miller uninteresting while churning out the same tired feminist tantrums disguised as journalism. She is not analyzing politics. She is recycling her hatred of conservative women. Amanda sneers at Katie Miller’s podcast because it is easier than admitting she has nothing new to say. Strip away the sneering, and all that’s left is a lazy filler piece Amanda cranked out to keep her byline alive.

This is not commentary. It is projection. Amanda calls others dull and petty because she knows that is what she brings to the table. Katie Miller is running a straightforward, fun, and insightful podcast. Amanda is nothing more than a hit-piece hack, hiding behind stale feminist rage and mistaking it for relevance.

The Real Nothingburger

If Amanda thinks a podcast episode about sororities is a nothingburger, then her column is an entire McDonald’s menu of nothing. The difference is, Katie Miller’s audience actually wants what she’s serving. Amanda’s audience? They’re shrinking, and they know it. That’s why her pieces read more like therapy sessions than cultural analysis.

Katie Miller will keep recording. Guests will keep showing up. And thanks to Amanda, I am now subscribed to Katie’s podcast. Her audience will keep listening.

Meanwhile, Amanda Marcotte will keep grinding out the same tired copy until even Salon’s own readers start wondering why they bother.

Amanda Marcotte may be the nothingburger herself, but her hit piece proves the recipe Salon serves up every day: petty, predictable, and terrified of conservative women.

Featured Image: BDEngler, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons/edited in Canva Pro