Max Miller’s Disastrous Interview

This week, Congressman Max Miller of Ohio appeared on CNN to address allegations that he abused his ex-wife and their two-year-old daughter. Miller maintains that he is innocent.

However, the way he handled himself during the interview — along with statements he’s made in previous videos — led many viewers to question whether his responses actually helped his own case.

So what did he say or do during the interview that had even open-minded viewers reacting with a skeptical “…what just happened?”

Here are three vocal, verbal, and visual ways the congressman made his own situation harder.

1. An audible sigh, right out of the gate.
Before Jake Tapper had even finished his first question, Miller let out an audible sigh. A sigh can read as exhaustion, but more often it reads as annoyance or impatience — and impatience is the last thing someone wants to project when the subject is allegations this serious. It risks making the moment look trivial to him, like an inconvenience rather than something he takes seriously.

2. The eye rolls and the sleepy-eyed stare.
Beyond looking generally unalert, Miller had a few subtle eye rolls over the course of the interview. An eye roll signals, at minimum, annoyance — and at worst, contempt for having to answer the questions at all. As a guest on someone else’s show, there’s a baseline level of respect owed to the host, even in an adversarial interview. Like the sigh, it’s a tell that rarely works in the guest’s favor.

3. The message itself was off.
Rather than lead with what’s true about his relationship with his daughter and ex-wife, Miller spent much of the interview litigating what he didn’t do. As the old saying goes, that’s a lot of protesting for someone who says there’s nothing to protest. A stronger message would have centered on his love for his daughter, his relationship with his ex-wife, and an unequivocal line that no one — especially a child — should ever be abused. Instead, he aired grievances against his former father-in-law, Senator Bernie Moreno, and came across as resentful that he had to explain himself at all.