The Revolving Door
Stephen Miller
As anyone with half a brain knows, access and egress to the Trump White House comes in the form of a revolving door. The list of those who have either resigned or been fired extends all the way from Foggy Bottom to Fredericksburg, Va. and from the West Wing to the West Coast. The list of the dismissed is a lengthy one. The reasons for their leaving - whether voluntarily or by fiat - vary and are occasionally even eyebrow-raising. The latest to be fired - America’s Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Louise "Masha" Yovanovitch - never got a reason for her dismissal. Sneering at her to his 66 million Twitter followers, ‘45 informed them that “Wherever Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad . . . . She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” Gee, I for one never fully realized how much political and strategic power a single ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary possesses; I must have been sleeping when they covered that subject in my diplomatic history class.
The roster of the rejected in Trumpland is both long and occasionally inexplicable. What, for but one example, caused Anthony Scaramucci’s tenure as White House Communications Director to last a mere 6 days, the shortest tenure in American history? (For those who are trivia buffs, the second shortest tenure belongs to Ronald Reagan’s Communication’s Director, Jack Koehler, who lasted in his post for 11 days back in March 1987. The longest tenure belongs to FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins - an amazing 12 years, 4 months.) It is true that Scaramucci was and is a world-class egomaniac with a mouth like the Okefenokee Swamp; then too, he is totally self-aware and has disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s epigram about there being “no second acts in America.”
By far, employment-wise, the two greatest mysteries of the current administration are Senior Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller, the president’s Senior Adviser for Policy. Of the former, one can be amazed that she still occupies her position if for no other reason than who she’s married to: George Conway, a conservative Harvard-trained attorney who spends a great deal of his time being a hostile thorn in the president’s side. The other day he likened his wife’s working for ‘45 to being a member of a cult. For his rhetorical efforts, Mr. Conway has been compared to Martha Mitchell, the wife of Richard M. Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, and an open critic of the Nixon administration during the Watergate scandal. And yet, Kellyanne still has her job.
Of the latter, Stephen Miller, much has been written. By now, most news junkies know of his early years, being raised in an upper-middle class Jewish home in Santa Monica, California; of his early “conversion” to hardcore political conservatism and his years at Duke University, where he helped future white supremacist leader Richard Spencer raise funds and promote an immigration policy debate between between Peter Laufer, an open-borders activist and University of Oregon professor, and journalist Peter Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE.
Prior to going to work for Donald Trump, Miller served as press secretary for former Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann and as an adviser to Alabama Senator (and future Attorney General) Jeff Sessions. Miller signed on early with the Trump campaign, aligning himself with Steve Bannon on most political issues. He traveled the country with the campaign, often acting as Trump’s “opening act.” It was Miller - along with Bannon - who created the anti-immigration strategy which would become central to the 2016 presidential race. He, more than anyone, created the anti-Muslim ban, the removing of refugee and immigrant children from their families, and keeping the administration from showing the public an internal study by the Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees had a net positive effect on government revenues. Miller insisted that only the costs of refugees be publicized, not the revenues refugees bring in. Then too, Miller - along with then-Senator Jeff Sessions - was largely responsible for creating and priming Trump’s obsession with building a wall on America’s Southern Border - the one that Mexico was going to pay for.
Stephen Miller is the great-grandchild of Jewish immigrants; people who came to the United States from Czarist Russia at the turn of the 20th century in order to escape murderous pogroms, state-sponsored anti-Antisemitism and the prospect of serving 25 years in the Czar’s army. Had Stephen Miller been a White House adviser back in 1903, his family would have been sent back to Europe, where they likely would have been exterminated by the Nazis years later. How in the world did Miller, who came from such a background and a family that prospered so greatly in a land which welcomed them with open arms, turn out to be such an anti-immigration hawk? How does a person reared in an atmosphere of progressive idealism and civility come to be a such a strident white nationalist?
MIller’s affinity for white nationalism has been thoroughly researched and documented through leaked emails. From what has been revealed - largely by the Southern Poverty Law Center - Stephen Miller really, truly believes that non-Nordic people possess lower IQs than Hispanics, Muslims and people of African descent; that they present a clear and present danger to the West. In sum, Miller wants America to look more like his home town of Santa Monica - rich and white. He is worse than an utter embarrassment to his family, his heritage and indeed, his country.
Of late though, various groups and Congressional caucuses have been gathering signatures and support, all demanding that Miller either be fired or resign his White House position. The chances of ‘45 ever firing him are somewhere between slim and none. The chances of him resigning are even less than that.
For those who refuse to sit back and groan in pain, there are petitions to be signed and steps to be taken. Among the places to go and add your name to the fight are:
To paraphrase a line from Fiddler on the Roof: “May God bless and keep Stephen Miller . . . far away from us!”
The revolving door is right in front of you . . .
350 days until the next presidential election.
Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone