Ramblin' with Roger

I was talking with someone about the recent elections, as one does, but I was bemoaning Stephen Miller’s selection as chief of staff.  Someone asked me why. Memo to self: not everyone keeps up with this political stuff the way I do. So, if you don’t know who he is, here are some pieces on Stephen Miller.

Nine years ago, The Daily Show shared Profiles in Tremendousness about the White House senior advisor. More recently, the show presented Sucking Out the Blood of American Democracy, explaining how his views on the world have been around for decades.

Katie Couric quotes djt from his recent 60 Minutes interview. “He thought his deportation policy was ‘too tough,’ noting immigrants who’d been in the country ten-plus years without committing any crimes or were paying ‘good taxes.’ ‘A lot of people would say that it’s great. But a lot of people think it’s too tough,’ he said. It’s an oddly timed revelation, given he has just made Stephen Miller, the architect of those draconian policies, his chief of staff.“

BBC: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sources told CBS that in recent weeks officials have been instructed to aim for about 2,700 arrests of illegal immigrants per day, an increase from an earlier 2,000 daily arrest target.

Ruthless loyalty

This week, the New York Times article There’s A New Roy Cohn in Town. Compare and contrast: “‘Where’s my Roy Cohn?’ [djt] cried out early in his first term in the White House. Mr. Cohn, the lawyer and fixer who mentored [him] during his ascent through New York real estate — and who taught him never to back down, never to apologize, and always to threaten opponents with multi-million-dollar lawsuits — was then dead for 31 years. [He] clearly longed for his ruthless loyalty and his abrasive, no-holds-barred defiance of the American establishment.”

RELATED: Blogger buddy Nik describes the new book, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey From Joe McCarthy To Donald Trump by Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark.

NYT: “In the wake of the Republican Party’s midterm calamity, most politicians would tack toward conciliation. [FOTUS] instead did what he was taught: He doubled down, replacing Ms. Wiles with Stephen Miller, the dedicated consigliere and attack dog who was the architect of some of his most divisive policies. Forty years after his mentor’s death, he found his Roy Cohn.”

The Atlantic: One person familiar with [FOTUS’s] decision to elevate Miller told us that he wants somebody who “will crack skulls,” adding that [FOTUS] “doesn’t want to be reined in.”

Call it what it is

If you didn’t know how horrific Stephen Miller is, it may be because “major media outlets sanitize [his] white nationalist ideas. Judd Legum’s Substack:

“The Washington Post described Miller as someone who ‘has long railed against political correctness’ and ‘a prominent voice on issues such as race, gender and immigration.’ The Wall Street Journal said Miller has ‘zealous views.’ The New York Times noted that Miller is ‘a perennial target of critics of Mr. Trump, who have highlighted his right-wing views.’ The AP cast Miller as ‘an immigration hardliner and a bombastic critic of Democrats.’ Reuters called Miller ‘caustic and uncompromising.’

“These are all euphemisms for Miller’s actual beliefs, which nearly every major media outlet neglected to state in plain terms. The record is clear: Miller has repeatedly promoted white nationalist ideas.

“A Popular Information review of 105 articles about Miller’s appointment in 36 mainstream publications — including CNN, NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, CNBC, NPR, Newsweek, Axios, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Time, and Semafor — found only two (USA Today and Politico) used the term ‘white nationalist.’ Even those two articles attributed the description to an outside group or ‘critics,’ rather than stating it as a fact.”

Tell it like it is

Per the Weekly Sift, which also contains a great cartoon of Stephen Miller appropriate to the discussion: “Here’s the headline in Le Monde, a leading French publication: ‘Stephen Miller, reactionary ideologue and white supremacist, promoted head of Trump administration‘. Contrast that direct truth-telling with this fascist-friendly characterization in the NYT:

“Mr. Miller has been the driver of the president’s most muscular actions, including the use of increasingly hostile tactics to capture immigrants across the country and the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean that he and Mr. Trump declared constituted a foreign invasion.”

Legum: “In an October 10 post on X, Miller promoted ‘remigration,’ the mass removal of non-European immigrants and their descendants. It is a ‘white supremacist policy concept,’ according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.” 

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore called Miller’s promotion “a chilling sign… And that may be the scariest thing of all about his new base of power: He has two more years to act on his deep belief in the Great Replacement Theory. This is the idea that traitorous liberals are deliberately destroying the country through a conspiracy to drown native white Americans in a sea of shiftless immigrants who trade illegal votes for welfare benefits and the opportunity to commit crimes. [FOTUS] talks about this nightmare scenario all the time as part of his demagogic pitch to the MAGA base. But for Miller, it’s an article of faith.”

A book

The Borowitz Report is touting the book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. “In her new book, Hatemonger, journalist Jean Guerrero provides a full portrait of this Nosferatu of the West Wing…. Jean Guerrero has the emails.” –The Bulwark. One could order it here, with none of the proceeds going to Bezos.