THE STEPHEN MILLER LINK
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
SEPTEMBER 3, 2017


THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STEPHEN MILLER AND TRUMP IS IN THE NEWS LATELY, AS MUELLER’S INVESTIGATION BRINGS OUT MORE INFORMATION ON THE TWO. MILLER CO-WROTE THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED DRAFT LETTER ABOUT THE INTENTION TO FIRE COMEY; AND RICHARD PAINTER, THE ETHICS CZAR TO GEORGE W BUSH IS THEORIZING ABOUT WHY MILLER HASN’T BEEN FIRED YET WHEN ALL HIS FELLOW ALT-RIGHTISTS WENT DOWN. IT’S ALL LINKED UP WITH THE FIRING OF COMEY, WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN TRUMP’S PRIVILEGE, AT LEAST IN SOME EYES, BUT WAS IT INTELLIGENT? MAYBE NOT, BUT IT WAS INEVITABLE. TRUMP USED THE RUSSIA CARD TOO OFTEN AND IN TOO OPEN A WAY; COMEY WAS ON HIS TRAIL, AND TRUMP REACTED EMOTIONALLY. I AM NOW CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT ROLE MILLER HAS PLAYED IN THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS.

I WAS LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ABOUT STEPHEN MILLER BECAUSE HE IS NOT IN THE SPOTLIGHT AS MUCH AS MANY OTHERS, BUT I DID KNOW THAT HE IS ONE OF THE HITLER WANNABES, AND WHEN I LOOK AT HIS FACE AND WATCH HIM ON THE NEWS (AS WITH JARED KUSHNER) I SEE A SMUG, CLASSIST, PRIM LITTLE SO AND SO. AS A RESULT, I AGREE WITH THIS WRITER MAEVE HIGGINS IN HER VIEW OF HIM. I INSTINCTIVELY DON’T LIKE HIM. THAT IS WHAT I SO OFTEN REALLY DISLIKE ABOUT THE WEALTHY – THEIR SIMPLE CONCEIT. THEY ARE CONCEITED BECAUSE THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN TESTED, AT LEAST NOT TO NEARLY AS GREAT A DEGREE AS THE SON OF A WORKING-CLASS MAN.

DONALD TRUMP HAS BROUGHT IN SOME THREE DOZEN OR MAYBE MORE VERY WEALTHY APPOINTEES OF THAT TYPE, WHO HAVE APPEARED IN THE NEWS SINCE THE INAUGURATION. CLASSISM IS THE KEY TO THE RIGHTIST THOUGHT, EITHER AMONG WHITE WORKERS OR AMONG THE GENUINELY PRIVILEGED. WHAT THEY ALL HAVE IN COMMON IS THAT THEY FEAR BEING “DISPLACED” FROM THEIR “RIGHTFUL PLACE” AS A WHITE AMERICAN. THE ONE THING THEY HAVE GOING FOR THEM IS THAT THEY ARE JUST ONE STEP ABOVE “COLOREDS” OF ANY GIVEN FINANCIAL CLASS, AND OF COURSE JEWS.

YOU MIGHT EXPECT THEM TO BOND LOGICALLY WITH MINORITIES AGAINST THE WEALTHY, BUT NO. THEY DEMAND THEIR ONE STEP OF SUPERIORITY AT ALL COSTS; THAT FEAR OF BEING SOCIALLY DISPLACED IS THE ROOT OF THE HATRED IN THIS COUNTRY. IF WE WEREN’T SO CLASS STRUCTURED IN OUR SOCIETY WE WOULDN’T HAVE THE PROBLEMS THAT ARE THREATENING TO DESTROY US TODAY. IN THE OLD SOUTH AND EVEN UP UNTIL THE FATEFUL YEAR 1963, WHITES WERE SECURE WITHIN THEIR INCOME-BASED STATUS, AND NOW THEY HAVE TO STUDY HARDER TO GET INTO COLLEGE AND WORK HARDER TO GET OR KEEP A JOB. THEY SEEM NOT TO REALIZE THAT THEY HAVE SIMPLY “HAD IT EASY” UP UNTIL THE CIVIL RIGHTS LAWS OF THE 1950S AND ‘60S. THEIR SUPERIOR POSITION WASN’T DESERVED, NOR WAS IT GUARANTEED. IT JUST HADN’T BEEN CHALLENGED YET. THESE DAYS ARE DIFFERENT, AND THE REAL RACIAL AND CLASS CONFLICTS ARE BEGINNING.

SO, AS THESE PRIVILEGED PEOPLE WERE ROILED EMOTIONALLY ON A NATIONWIDE BASIS – NOT MERELY IN THE SOUTH – HERE COMES DONALD TRUMP FOLLOWING A CAREFULLY PLANNED-OUT PATTERN OF HARASSMENT OF ALL NON-WASPS. THE KIND OF RUDE, CRUDE TALK THAT THEY HAD HEARD ALL THEIR LIVES WAS ON TRUMP’S LIPS, SO THEY THOUGHT THAT THEIR PROPHET HAD COME. TO MAKE THIS WORSE, TOO MANY OF THE REPUBLICANS AND THE OLD SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN “DOG WHISTLING” THEM ALONG ALSO, WITH THE CODE WORDS OF RACISM. IT IS A GREAT MISFORTUNE THAT A TRULY HARDCORE GROUP OF RACISTS WERE ACTIVE WHO HAD LONG AWAITED THIS OPPORTUNITY TO BRING BACK THE CONDITIONS OF THE OLD SOUTH. “THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN.” THE PIT TRAP IS THE FACT THAT APPARENTLY A LARGE NUMBER OF FULLY FASCIST PEOPLE HAVE JOINED THE MOB.

IT’S PARTLY FUNNY AND PARTLY SAD THAT SOME REPUBLICANS, AFTER HAVING PROFITED FROM THAT SOCIAL DIVIDE THEMSELVES FOR YEARS, ARE NOW DISMAYED TO FIND THAT A TRULY DANGEROUS MOB HAS EMERGED AT THEIR DOORS. THOSE “GOOD REPUBLICANS” HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO CONTROL THEM, AND THEY NOW LOOK CONTAMINATED THEMSELVES BY THE FLOOD OF HATRED ALONG WITH THEIR NEW RECRUIT, DONALD TRUMP. HE LOOKED LIKE A SHOE IN FOR A REPUBLICAN WIN OVER A PARTICULARLY HATED DEMOCRAT IN HILLARY CLINTON, BUT HIS OPENLY ESPOUSED ALT-RIGHT FRIENDS ARE IN POWER AS WELL, AND THEY AREN’T THE ORDINARY “CONSERVATIVES.”

TO THE DEGREE THAT WEALTHY DEMOCRATS HAVE ALSO BEEN INVOLVED IN STIRRING THESE THINGS UP, THEN THEY DESERVE BLAME AS WELL. CLINTON HERSELF PLAYED THE COOL AND SUPERIOR PART TOO LONG. SHE THOUGHT SHE HAD THE ELECTION SECURED. SHE KEEPS BLAMING BERNIE SANDERS FOR HER LOSS, BUT IT IS HERSELF WHO IS HATED. SANDERS IS RATHER WIDELY ADMIRED AS A HARD FIGHTER EVEN AMONG SOME REPUBLICANS. TRUMP HIMSELF HAS SPOKEN IN A BEMUSED BUT RESPECTFUL WAY OF HIM. SO, HERE WE ARE WITH ONE FOOT OVER THE CLIFF AND THE OTHER STILL ON THE GROUND ABOVE. WILL WE BE ABLE TO PULL OURSELVES BACK UP AGAIN?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/opinion/sunday/stephen-miller-immigration.html?_r=0
Stephen Miller Is the Enemy of My Dreams
By MAEVE HIGGINS SEPT. 2, 2017

Photograph -- Stephen Miller might even enjoy the animosity. Credit Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

I am a peaceable person. By that I mean I avoid conflict and also I’m quite lazy. People generally appeal to me. I can see their good side. I sometimes have fleeting antagonisms: toward a waitress I feel is being too performative in her friendship with a coffee shop regular, or that woman on the subway eating a plum really loudly. But in general, I have a smiley face and at the risk of sounding bonkers, I make friends with almost everyone I come across. What I’m missing, I’ve come to realize after a summer of cookouts and heart-to-hearts and hiking trips, is an enemy.

Until I secure a worthwhile enemy, I cannot consider myself a successful grown-up. It’s sobering to consider why it hasn’t happened yet. Am I not important enough? Am I not fierce enough?

Every heroine must have an opponent who makes her better, stronger, nimbler than before. Who shall propel me forward on waves of bitter animosity? Crucially, I live in a chaotic time where people like me, people who usually bumble along unbothered, have to step up and stand for something. It’s not a hardening of the heart so much as a sharpening of the spirit.

So recently I closed my eyes and looked around on a deep level for who’s bothering me. All my life I’ve been mystified by and envious of people with a clear sense of purpose combined with an undeserved sense of confidence. Then I have pet hates — ones that have bloomed so abundant in this country of late, namely racism, the demonizing of immigrants, and white people lashing out at progress because they somehow feel victimized by it. Out of this checklist, a phantasm emerged, and as it took shape I saw it was none other than Stephen Miller, waving at me cheerfully as he stepped into view. It’s funny, isn’t it? Sometimes what you’re looking for has been right there all along, shouting over women on cable news shows.

Mr. Miller is one of President Trump’s senior advisers on policy, and he served as his hype man on the campaign trail. On Friday, it emerged that in May, he drafted a letter firing the F.B.I. director James B. Comey, but the letter was too problematic to use. More recently, you could catch him haughtily disrespecting the Statue of Liberty and, it seems likely, hastening the end of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the most humane and sensible piece of immigration reform in decades. He wears skinny ties. He has a loud voice and quiet eyes. His obsession is immigration and how scary immigrants are. He blames us for everything.

This country has practically militarized borders, but Mr. Miller insists that “uncontrolled migration” is responsible for plummeting wages and overcrowded schools. He skips over the fact that migration is strictly controlled, technology has taken jobs away from Americans far more than immigrants have, overcrowding in schools is caused by a plethora of factors, and crime rates are lower among immigrants than among people born here. Like his boss’s, his lies are so brazen it’s almost impressive.

I think he’s The One. Mr. Miller and I both spend our time thinking and learning about immigration. I am an immigrant and make a podcast about immigration, but he goes many steps further. He helps create our nation’s immigration policy. He was a big proponent of the first travel ban. You know, the grotesque one that tried to block Syrian refugees forever. I understand that he is stronger than I am, not physically, I’d imagine, but politically.

I do not know him personally and he doesn’t have a clue who I am. Perhaps it’s self-aggrandizing of me to choose him, but a real enemy should be a stretch. He is clever and works very hard. He has immense privilege. I watch him closely. I wonder how healthy it is, this new fixation on my enemy. Then I recall hearing animal experts say that getting a second cat, even one that your first cat despises, is a good idea. That’s because the second cat gives the first cat something to think about, and this mental stimulation is a positive thing; it can even extend the cat’s life. I’m that first cat, getting tougher, more focused, maybe a bit immortal. “Miller,” I think, “where are you now? What are you doing? Are you using my litter box again?”

Mr. Miller seems to enjoy animosity, so perhaps I shouldn’t give him what he craves. I remind myself that he was once a chubby little baby, with balled-up fists, looking out from his stroller at lights and shadows. Even today, he’s really just a guy in a little suit he has chosen so carefully that it breaks my heart. I wonder why he wants everyone to speak English all the time — did his parents force him to watch too much “Dora the Explorer”? I wonder how he squares his great-grandparents’ fleeing Belarus, running for their lives to America, with his repeated attempts to shut out the equivalent families of today.

Recently I’ve been following the social media hashtag #undocujoy. It’s a space where undocumented immigrants show up smiling, celebrating birthdays and graduations, despite the fear instilled by this administration. I scroll through the images and I’m delighted. “Miller would really hate this,” I think.

I’d much rather he wasn’t in the White House, but having him as my enemy gives me clarity. While he’s over there, destroying, I’ll be right here, creating. The math on how best to live is simple now. We need to protect one another and value each person equally, and anyone working against that? Well, he will have to face me.

Maeve Higgins is the author of “Off You Go: Away From Home and Loving It. Sort Of” and the host of the podcast “Maeve in America.”

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.


DAN RATHER: “TRUMP SEIZED WITH FEAR...”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz8ELbJ-lfg


THIS MAN KNOWS TOO MUCH:

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/this-man-knows-too-much-ex-bush-ethics-czar-says-trump-is-afraid-to-fire-stephen-miller/
‘This man knows too much’: Ex-Bush ethics czar says Trump is afraid to fire Stephen Miller
David Ferguson
01 SEP 2017 AT 16:04 ET

WATCH VIDEO: Former ethics czar to Pres. George W. Bush Richard Painter on MSNBC (Screen capture)

The former ethics czar to President George W. Bush said on Friday that the only reason President Donald Trump’s White House hasn’t fired aide Stephen Miller is because he “knows too much” and would be a danger to the administration from the outside.

Richard Painter was appearing on “Meet the Press Daily” with Katy Tur and political reporter Ken Dilanian in a discussion of a letter written by Miller and President Trump about the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. The letter predates the memo written by Deputy Attorney Gen. Rod Rosenstein, which was — for a time — the official justification for Comey’s firing.

If the two letters offer conflicting rationales for Comey’s firing, Painter said, then it calls into question the president’s motives and could well provide the basis for an obstruction of justice charge.

“It appears that this letter is quite different than the rationale that was used by the Justice Department to recommend the firing of James Comey,” he explained. “Stephen Miller advised the president on how to draft it… It is interesting that Stephen Miller is still around there. He was an ‘alt-right’ person that many of us expected to be fired weeks ago along with Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and the rest of them. But I think he knows too much, this man knows too much. That may be why he’s still there.”


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/stephen-miller-james-comey-and-the-mystery-of-the-secret-hour
Stephen Miller, James Comey and the Mystery of the Secret Hour
By JOSH MARSHALL Published SEPTEMBER 1, 2017 1:12 PM

With the news that Robert Mueller has a copy of the original letter on James Comey’s firing written by Trump aide Stephen Miller and Trump himself, we need to return to the great mystery of that lost hour on the tarmac on Air Force One.

What am I talking about? Well, with a touch of dramatic flair I’m talking about this odd and increasingly odd over time mystery about what was happening the night President Trump came back from his Bedminster villa after a weekend of stewing about James Comey and then fired Comey 36 hours later.

At the time, it just seemed like another Trump era weirdness. Air Force One landed. Jared got off the plane, put Ivanka and the kids in an SUV and then got back on the plane. And then Trump and a group of his closest aides were apparently arguing on the plane for about an hour while the traveling press cooled its heels and wondered what was going on. They never got an explanation. But after about an hour a rather disheveled President Trump got off the plane and went back to the White House. Who was there on the plane with Trump? Stephen Miller.

Here’s the key portion from my rundown from early June on the details …

4. What happened that Sunday night on Air Force One? What am I talking about? Let’s look at the timeline. We know from abundant reporting that in early May (May 6th-7th) President Trump spent the weekend at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. He apparently stewed over that weekend about Comey and came back to Washington Sunday night determined to fire him. He proceeded to do just that. He called in Rosenstein and Sessions the next day (Monday), got Rosenstein’s recommendation memo and promptly fired Comey on Tuesday (May 9th).

This we all know. But that Sunday evening return flight from New Jersey was also the night something kind of odd happened. Air Force 1 left Morristown at 8:02 PM and landed at Andrews at 8:40. But unlike what normally happens, the President didn’t get off the plane. Just before 9 PM Jared and Ivanka got off the plane with their kids. Jared put Ivanka and the kids into a silver minivan and got back on the plane. He got off the plane again at 9:07 and then got back on the plane a couple minutes later. The press pooler for that night filed an update at 9:18 PM updating colleagues and noting that there’d been no explanation what the hang up was or why the President was still on the plane.

Finally, at 9:24 PM the cabinet room opened and the president emerged. Here’s the pool report filed a few minutes later.

Cabinet door opened at 9:24 pm, and POTUS, sans tie, emerged at 9:26,
46 mins after wheels down. He was followed a moment later by Hope
Hicks, Jared Kusher, KT McFarland, Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino.

No immediate explanation from press shop for the delay.

Kushner walked by the press corp, and stopped briefly in front of reporters. “Every is good. He was just working on something,” Kushner
said.

One reporter asked if he would do any more briefings. “I don’t think
so. I’m not as good as Sean.”

A few minutes later the press cool [sic] got this from the press office: “On background, the President was finishing a meeting.”

Here’s a mini-collage I put together the next evening (Monday evening), along with photos posted to Twitter by Mark Knoller of CBS news.

Not a great deal got made of this after that evening. That’s understandable and largely correct. Any number of things could have happened. Maybe they just wanted to finish a meeting. Maybe the President was eating or needed a bathroom break. It was only 45 minutes. Let me also clearly bound my own questions and speculations. I don’t think anything horrible or shocking happened in that 45 minutes. But given the oddity of the event and the fact that Trump returned to the White House and immediately put in process one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency – firing Comey – I think it is highly, highly likely that the two things are connected. As you can see from the pool report, Trump was traveling with what I would call five of his most aggressive and enabling advisers: Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner, KT McFarland, Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino. We know from subsequent reporting that Kushner was a major proponent, perhaps the most voluble proponent of firing Comey. I strongly suspect that the hold up was some on-going discussion, perhaps a heated discussion, of the decision to fire Comey.

However that may be, I think Kushner’s role in all of the entire Trump/Russia story is bigger and more central than most of us have understood. One day will find out what happened in that 45 minutes. And I’ll be happy that day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.