Stephen Miller, as a grandson of immigrants, is a victim of self hate.
it amazes me in the current debate in the U.S.about immigration, asylum, crime - a hodgepdge of fodder for demagogues and populists. idiots and bigots, that there is so little attention paid, even in the more enlightened media such as the NYT, WP, CNN and mainstream TV, to the truly destructive factor on the weak and poor Central American countries; which give cause to the massive influx of asylum seekers: the GIGANTIC U.S: market for drugs. This is the cause of the horrendous increase in crime in these weak countries.
If the U.S. had a wise government, which obviously it has not, it would focus on (1) decreasing domestic demand for illicit drugs, and (2) invest the horrendous amounts now pouring into ICE, border contyril, and the WALL, instead in projects to help these fledgling countries combat the crime gangs and corruption.
12
The banality of evil
6
Stephen Miller is a white nationalist & a villain but he has a lot of co-conspirators in the Trump regime--starting with Trump himself.
16
This guy is a sad little wimp who likes to hurt other people in order to demonstrate how powerful he is.
9
It might be ironically delicious if Stephen Miller -- a white nationalist in everything but ethnicity! -- officially were forced into the limelight and given the reins on immigration so we can watch gleefully as he self-immolates under Trump's erratic and nasty stare, like everyone else who has held this short-tenured job title. It also would expose Miller to the light of day, always a wonderful disinfectant for the roaches of his kind who scurry behind the walls when no one's looking!! Rasputin, anyone?
10
Stephen Miller is the latest incarnation of Trump's former mentor, the late, unlamented, despicable Roy Cohn.
7
There will be a book written about Mr. Miller, the person running the White House soon the title will be “Trump’s Brain”.
2
I hope scientists stop coming to the US. Reverse brain drain from China and India is the perfect antidote to this administration's dumb and nativist, and borderline-racist immigration policy.
3
"... can't act alone," huh? Can and is...
2
Only Democrats would argue we need more poor people, LOL.
1
It is a curiosity to me that the Trump administration rejects all those anti-abortion Christians (Catholics, mostly) at the border. After all, the evangelical groups that helped Trump get elected insist (wrongly) that Christians are becoming an abused minority in the U.S. Let's get more Christians in while expelling those Muslim infidels! (sarcasm)
Brown Christians do not fit into Trump's (and Miller's) utopian white nation? Wait, I forget they deny being White Nationalsts.
8
Democrats: Keep ‘em comin’.
Time for Mr. Miller to orchestrate the dismantling of the Statue of Liberty. Isn't this really all her fault? Lock her up!!!
6
Stephen Miller, aka Grima Wormtongue.
2
The archvillain of the Trump administration is Trump.
5
[In the year 2050 in a living room somewhere in America:]
Bobby: Mommy, what was Granddad like. You said he worked for President Trump.
[Mom, a faraway look in her eye:] Yes, he was famous. Here's what one columnist in the NYTimes wrote: "Stephen Miller is a man whose anti-immigration zeal remains unfettered by concern for the law, international norms, or basic humanity."
Bobby: Gee, no wonder you never talk about him.
1
Not to mention the 40% of the electorate who support him. ( Down only 6% from election date 8/11/16. This indicates a deep sickness- of intellect, emotional disconnection, and of spirit - at the root of our society. It goes way beyond GOP politicians
14
@Kate Seley
Across continents, e.g., Turkey and Poland now, this 21st Century has created extraordinarily left-behind in every way and isolated humans.
Will the 0.01% who both own and control more than 90% of the world's wealth wake up before they are deposed? Much like the guillotine beheadings in France centuries ago?
Find and read Dalio's terse message and warning to his cohort about the failure of "capitalism" and foreseeable consequences. Soon.
4
The most significant portion of responsibility for the implementation of Stephen Miller's inhumane agenda has been aided and abetted by Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Paul Ryan and the Republicans in Congress who have failed in their Constitutional duties to this country to keep this administration in check. It has been abundantly clear for a very long time that Donald Trump, despite his constant insistence that he is "the king", understands virtually nothing and is not interested in the complex issues and consequences of Miller's ruthless agenda, among other significant issues. I'd like an understanding of how an unelected zealous advisor, with no accountability, has been allowed to wield so much influence counter to the values of this country and the wishes of the majority of the electorate who are not part of the president's cherished base.
18
Of course there is plenty of guilt to go around on all sides of Trump's administration. This is what you get when only second and third rate people will work for Trump.
6
The powerful say they want justice but what they need, more than anything, is mercy. Mr. Miller behaves as if he believes he never will need mercy. He is a fool.
88
Those working under trump will go back to the old "I was following orders" excuse. I have no sympathy for Nielsen. she will suffer some interesting karma as will all those happily carry out trump's orders.
9
The enacting of DACA (and its odious uncle, DAPA) by President Barak Obama played a big part in delivering the Electoral College to Donald Trump. Had Obama maintained and even improved his peek deportation numbers through the remainder of his second term, Trump would have lost.
Americans are tired of mass illegal immigration and want it stopped.
3
@Chi Lau, excuse me! DACA is documented, it’s absolutely legal. It’s really strange preposterous actually, that people who are themselves immigrants, want to hold barriers for other immigrants.
5
Wrenching families apart, as the slave traders and masters did in the Old South, is a barbaric cruelty that should never have been tolerated and that must not be tolerated now.
We must never allow this practice to be reinstated, and if Stephen Miller intends to do this and we let it happen, then we are as guilty as he is.
12
Beautifully written analysis by Michelle Cottle. Sadly, over time, both the well-intentioned and ill-intentioned have helped create and sustain the inhumane immigration mess.
However, in the race for “the perfection of rottenness,” Stephen Miller continues to lead the field.
5
I keep reading how Trump, Miller, et al hate immigrants & want to stop immigration. Has it occurred to any of you that they are talking about ILLEGAL ALIENS invading our country. Not once have I heard Trump or anyone else wants to stop LEGAL immigration.
Our Asylum laws & process are a joke. Stop blaming Trump for the problem & start blaming congress for not fixing the laws.
One last thing, look at how Obama handled the southern boarder. How he took children from their parents & locked them in cages. Where was the outrage then! You hypocrites make me sick with you false outrage over Trumps actions when they are the same things Obama did.
4
@ Troy, Where have you been? There have been multiple stories of people seeking asylum being stopped. At ports of entry told to go back; border patrol on the bridge to prevent people crossing over to access point to apply for asylum; Trump a couple days ago telling border agents to break the law and prevent people from seeking asylum. Google, read, watch, wake up. The only separations President Obama did were known criminals. Please Google, read, watch.
7
I would guess that most of the people commenting here in favor of miller’s strategy either came here from somewhere else or are descendants of immigrants as I am.
That is very strange.
Had his policies been in place years ago, we might be dead or suffering in the lands of our origins. (Not oranges)
7
Who's to say he's not Trump's 'conduit' to the White Supremacist organizations? His pompous pronouncements are always good for a laugh though, and the fact that his grandparents were Jewish immigrants leaves him with zero credibility. True, his mayhem is being enabled by the silence of many, but those who are corrupt and mighty always fall, and his fall will be further than most.
4
"The Border Is Broken" announces a NY Times headline today.
Now, more than ever, we should be grateful for Stephen Miller. Imagine what anarchy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would release upon us if she were in charge.
4
@Victor Wong, you got it wrong. Democrats aren’t for “open” borders, they are for systematically tackling these problems, they aren’t running away from it.
8
Stephen Miller is one of the most dangerous individuals in America. He is the gasoline to President Trump's fire and he knows it. He is content to hide in the shadows as befits an individual of his ilk. The famous phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" comes to mind here. I doubt President Trump will ever fire Mr. Miller. Keep the sunlight on him and hopefully come Election Day 2020 American voters will disinfect the country of him.
13
The old " only allowed orders" excuse didn't work in Nuremburg, and it won't work now. Nelson was blinded by unfettered ambition and deserves nothing but scorn.
7
So, on one side of our southern border, we have migrants from, say, Guatemala who preferred not to stay in Guatemala, nor to stay in Mexico, but to cross the border into the United States. What is your explanation for that preference, Michelle? And why aren't Americans rushing the southern border to get into Mexico, then travelling in caravans to Guatemala? Are you ready to go? Bags all packed? Didn't think so.
Unless you can think of a better explanation, there must be something about our way of doing things, our culture, that has worked out better than has the culture of Guatemala, or, apparently, Mexico. We must have something worth preserving, so it makes sense to ensure that those who come here to live are agreeable to following our laws, making some kind of positive contribution, and otherwise supporting what we may call "The American Way." And we are not stingy in that regard, we welcome many people to cross our borders and enter the United States--and this is important--legally.
Those who are tasked with implementing our immigration laws perform a valuable service for us and do not deserve to be reviled by the NYT with hollow smears or the hysterical "children in cages" trope. Direct your animus instead to those who would crash our borders, endanger their own children, game our system with bogus asylum claims, and disrespect our country by entering unlawfully.
4
Those who cross our southern border and request asylum ARE crossing legally according to international law and American law. Few are crossing looking only for work. Most are fleeing their home counties because of persecution of some kind. Should we just take a bulldozer to the State off Liberty?
3
Oh, please!
Anyone following the ascent of right-wing populism knows that "restrictionist" and "ethnonationalist," are simply coded terms for what the far-right really are: white-supremacists.
Please avoid using the terms that they, themselves, like to use to hide their true feelings and intentions.
5
Miller is a particularly nasty piece of work and we can only hope that when Trump is gone, he is, too, forever.
10
Can’t quite work out why Democrats are so intent upon obstructing every attempt to secure our borders from the onslaught of illegal foreign trespassers and their brazen exploitation of our public services, our schools, hospitals, labor market, (diminishing) natural resources, birthright citizenship laws, and our welfare system ....at a cost to American workers in the $BILLIONS, year after year after year....
15
@Shenoa Democrats care about border security. Real border security, but not the hyperbolic reality show that Trump prefers. Real border policy requires a balance, and compassion and actual fact-based solutions. All Trump does is scare and anger the American people into accepting the cruel and reactionary as normal business. That is not policy as much as it is a sick sort of propaganda that only requires rage-voting. Rage-voting is fine with Trump if it works in his favor. It does not, however, fix the border problems. Worse yet it is distructive.
46
@Shenoa: Population is a global issue that won't be solved by banning birth control and abortion. The Republican position on immigration is schizoid.
21
@Shenoa It's a form of virtue signaling completely divorced from reality.
13
Didn't Trump marry an immigrant? Didn't Stephen Miller's family immigrate to the US? Did any of Nielsen's ancestors immigrate? These people have no compassion or shred of humanity.
10
This young man bears such a striking resemblance to Roy Cohn, especially the dead eyes. The thought that so many of my country-fellows put this man anywhere near the seat of power says it all, and no one seems to know what to do. Here come the Thought Police: gotta cut this short and reconfigure my ploughshare.
7
About HALF the species on earth are migrating.
"'We're talking about a redistribution of the entire planet's species,'" says Gretta Pecl, lead author of a new study in Science that examined the implications of wildlife on the move."
Asking: Where are the ~130 million people in Mexico gonna go when the rain is insufficient for crops, when the water supply can't support Mexico City?
Head south to the Panama Canal?
No.
I don't like Trump or Miller.
I don't think either party can solve this problem — one of myriad complex problems that are going become more severe, at an accelerated rate.
Submit: We're in the early stages of The Big Suffer (apocalypse).
Human culture is the dominant, short-term driver of evolution.
We've generated unprecedented, "alien" environs.
Our biological and cultural coding structures for relationship interface (genetic, legal, monetary, religious, etc.) are increasingly mismatched with the novel environs we continue to generate.
I interviewed the brilliant Dr. Frank Vertosick in 2006.
He said humans aren't smart enough to be planetary stewards. I tried to counter. I was wrong.
Immigration is a complex problem that is going to increase — exponentially at some point? — as seas rise, drought, flood & fire continue to increase in number and severity, etc.
Per the ongoing destruction of Geo Eco & Bio networks, we will likely be asking: where should the people of NY, Miami, Phoenix, LA, San Diego, etc., go?
Likely, economic collapse will happen first?
4
Steven Miller is oh-so easy to despise. However, let's not take our eye off the ball. He is Trump's lieutenant, not his general. This is what Trump wants and Steven Miller is in alignment and only too happy to oblige.
6
Stephen Miller sound unhinged when he hear him talk.
6
When it comes to encouraging white nationalists Mr. Miller should be very careful indeed. I hear that they are determined that he won't replace them.
8
Stephen Miller, according to his uncle, is a self-hating bigot, still desperately trying to get back at the kuhl kids at Santa Monica High School. They didn't like him. They thought he was ridiculous. He continues to nurse this horrifying injury in any way that he believes will finally, finally show them! That he is using small brown people to "show them" that he is not only not ridiculous but must be feared is a national embarassment. I wonder whether, if his high school graduating class were to make a public apology for pantsing him or whatever their sins were, Miller would finally have had enough of his destructive ambitions to prove that he is worth something after all. Probably not. He really is exactly what his classmates thought - ridiculous.
8
Watching what is happening in the US from across the Atlantic, I can't help thinking that it looks like Trump isn't just wanting to win the 2020 election. If it would be up to him and whoever backs him, I guess he would love to expand and change the laws to stay in "power" as long as he can.
But my other concern is the people as Michelle Cottle writes, I mean the american public who are still backing this president.
A famous Rabbi once said (not the exact words): "To be ignorant is not a sin, but not wanting to know is."
Not wanting to know, not wanting to hear the other side, rejecting a constructivistic discourse with the Others who have a different opinion is what this President and those who back him with their paranoia and wanting to be in control is what is ruthlessly breaking your world apart. And sadly, although different players over here, are trying to break our democracies as well.
How long will it take until we start peacefully resisting our governments while they deliberately walk down the road to authoritarian democracies. Resisting by making ourselves heard, by our votes, by civil courage and by talking to people who have differing opinions than ours? Not convincing them but understanding and exchanging opinions?
2
@john tay it's not merely a matter of not wanting to know. Since Trump's election I have learned to my dismay a large percentage of citizens are enthusiastic Trump supporters. They cheer when he claims he can stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and no one would care. Trump is a reflection of these people. In him, they see themselves in all of their petty resentments and just plain meanness. That is what distresses me.
6
Immigration to the United States of America is not a God given right to citizens of the world.The sooner the absurd Democrats wake up to this and work with Republicans to create an immigration system that helps America the better.Every prior effort has been thwarted by politicians of both parties since none of the elites of either party want to secure our borders, until that happens Americans in general will not support so called immigration reform, first secure the borders then redo immigration.
2
“It’s tempting to see Stephen Miller as the archvillain of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But there is much guilt to go around, and even reluctant collaborators cannot be allowed to absolve themselves of responsibility for the administration’s continuing outrages.”
Tenuous as it may be, we still live in a society in which the lives of the editorialists writing this piece are safe from prison or worse.
History will not be “nice” to Stephen Miller. In the meantime we need to apply pressure on the GOP to oust Failure Trump,Miller et al,and I feel the only way is for the people to VOTE the Republicans out.
4
It takes a village to support trump and Stephen Miller. That village is the Republican party and the 40% of Americans who support trump.
That means that 60% disapprove of trump and his policies. Vote out the Republicans and trump in 2020.
5
Michelle Goldberg's column of April 9 about Kirstjen Nielsen summed up my thoughts on Stephen Miller and the rest of Trump's cabal. We should make it impossible for them to assume any significant presence in politics, academia or business - forever - after they inevitably leave or find themselves out of Trump's good graces. They have shown us exactly who they are, and they should never again be allowed to darken the door of American public life.
7
Toqueville had Americans figured out long ago when he wrote in the 1830s: "As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in? "
The American answer to our miserable times and miserable president must be: "Who profited from the crimes?"
5
It's a tough situation that the politicians have created against the will of most Americans. Now, the open border globalists are conflating refugees and illegal invaders.
Thank God for President Trump and advisors like Stephen Miller!
Most people who immigrated to the US for its whole history sought to escape bad circumstances in their birthplaces. People usually don't uproot themselves, except under duress.
5
@Steve Bolger - on one side of my family, the family founder jumped ship off the coast of Georgia in 1745, because if he had returned to Scotland he would have been hanged as a rebel. On the other side, four brothers effectively ran like hell out of 1887 Prussia for fear they'd be conscripted into the army and used as cannon fodder. Nobody crosses oceans or continents as a lark. Not in 1745, 1887 nor 2019.
9
@Steve Bolger, there’s something magical about America. People gathered here represent all corners of the planet. Most came here broken fixed themselves and America prospered with them, because of them.
4
When Stephen Miller speaks. he is almost autistic in the way he presents his facts, but I don’t doubt for a second that it is out of a sense of duty and not for personal gain that he speaks up. But most importantly his facts are correct. When he says illegal immigration costs us about 165 billion dollars a year he is correct.
There is a reason that Americans work longer hours, get shorter vacations and retire later than those in like developed countries. It is because at the end of the day someone has to pay for the services of the tens of millions of illegal immigrants. For example we just saw the headlines over the teachers strike in Los Angeles where it came to light that over 90% of the 500,000 plus students (mostly Spanish speaking) were on welfare – who do you think is paying for their education.
But the real issue is population. In the 1960’s population was something people could speak about, because mostly the 1st concern was Caucasian awareness. However, now Caucasians, Chinese and Japanese have addressed the issue . It is the brown people as the PC police call them, who while benefiting from the medical advances have yet to take on the accompanying responsibility that survival rates require.
That is why they have the problems they are having, and climate change is a threat. That is why they are teeming over our borders and destroying their countries habitats and ultimately will bring ruin to humans and the planet as well.
Miller is speaking up.
1
@Ben Ross: Missionaries don't teach people to have fewer children when science extends lifespans.
2
@Ben Ross
"Tens of millions?" If that is a "fact," perhaps you and Miller could be more precise. Otherwise you are both guessing and likely inflating the actual number. This lack of accuracy calls into question your previous assertion about Americans working longer hours, etc. to support illegal immigrants. Then, you conflate schoolchildren “Spanish speaking” and being welfare with illegal status. Of course you think Miller is correct. You make broad assertions to prove a preconceived idea, just like him and his boss.
7
"KEEP OUT your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".
Trumps next executive order: take down the Statue of Liberty and put up one of Trump.
8
'it takes a village....'
4
Miller doesn't need to act alone. All he has to do is play Rasputin to Trump's Tsar Nickolas II. Like Trump's model, Mussolini, Rasputin also ended up being assassinated by the same Conservative "nobles" who had earlier supported him. Rasputin's assassination triggered the fall of the Romanov dynasty & the Russian Revolution weeks later. Trumpistas take warning...
2
@Beartooth: Rasputin was a crackpot monk playing with the heads of ignoramuses.
Sad to see someone so young so hate-filled. What an embarrassment to his family. History of course will be written by the survivors and these fools wont last long...
10
Feeling about the author is that she has not been around in life,never served in an ngo abroad in countries where life is really tough,shared the suffering of the citizenry there, known what it is to be up against it like so many in developing countries where folks, despite the odds against them, carry on, hoping against hope that 1 member of the family can make it to the US and make possible an escape from hopelessness for the others. Author lives in a bubble, as Beth Spaeth has written of NYT reporters, not all but those on the EB.MC accuses Mr.Miller of nativism,which is "loufoque,"given his own ethnic origins. She accuses him of being against immigration from Muslim countries, but those majority Islamic countries that ABH has served in, Senegal, Guinea Conakry, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, its citizens r free to immigrate providing they have a local sponsor. Second "epouse,"Djeannaba waits patiently for a visa in Ziguinchor with our middle son, Youssef, and there is a flourishing and large Senegalese community in New York and throughout the US, and Senegal is 90 percent Muslim!The Donald is working on your behalf as well as mine, Ms. Cottle, and I believe you should be more appreciative!"Blood bath? "" D'ou vous sortez?" Last I heard all of those whom Trump sacked r alive and well and have great futures ahead of them, since they can put their service for the admin. on their resumes!
1
Why does Stephen Miller forget that his grand parents were also immigrants. And at that time Jews were as much despised as he despises the Muslim immigrants. If it was OK for those people to come and settle here ,why is it not OK for other deserving people to come and make USA their home?
88
@Syed Abdulhaq, because every generation has to behave stupidly. Perhaps it is in their genes. Switching roles between victims and perpetrators. Till endless times.
6
@Syed Abdulhaq I don't think it's as much a matter of him forgetting or not knowing as it is he simply doesn't care. These are mostly brown (and some black) migrants the Administration is dealing with, after all.
12
@ShenoaBut they came here just like the ones that are coming now.
This is why you should never taunt the nerdy little jackass in middle school. He just might grow up to be Stephen Miller.
7
Wow! As if the Obama administration had not 'caged' migrant children or separated them from their parents. As if Congress had not created enormous incentives for would-be immigrants to use children cynically, as hostages, by creating a "loophole" whereby asylum-seekers with children could not be denied entry, no matter that there were not enough judges or courts to meet the demand for ruling on asylum requests.
We might as well have put a giant sign in the sky; "Bring Children, and You Are Welcome to Stay Here As Long As You Wish" Do we remember what Barack Obama said about "Don't bring Children ?" We also unintentionally invited the Cartels to exploit this onrush of asylum-seekers.
The big-money political donors" interests are all over this opinion piece.
Asylum-seekers nearly doubling in three years wasn't invented by Trump. The situation was tailor-made for "cruelty" by Congress starving the asylum-judges of resources. Sort of like Congress announcing, "Free Bread!" Then, when 1,000 hungry people show up, giving them three loaves of bread to live on.
And Congress says, "Who, me? My intentions are pure."
Once inside the US, living as best they can -- and incidentally bringing in hundreds of thousands of off-the-books low-paid workers every year -- asylum seekers rarely show up for the resources-starved asylum hearings held for their cases.
Who benefits? Employers who are big political donors. Everyone else -- US workers, migrants, citizens -- suffers.
2
@mitchell
who hires them?
People like trump so he can pay them low wages.
2
I'm exhausted by the onslaught of the daily media coverage of Trump and the sycophants who surround, support and influence him like Stephen Miller. And I feel helpless.
What is the resistance doing to end this administration which is descending into the destruction of our democracy through the unfettered power a supreme leader? All the descriptive adjectives to criticize him have been exhausted. All the opinionated analysis of his administration has been shared and has served as a sort of personal catharsis. All hope in replacing him in 2020 has been based upon faith in the power of the polls and an inspirational candidate. All the emails and tweets have landed on the deaf ears of our elected officials in both parties. All discussion of his impeachment has been tabled. I understand that many organizations are in the fight but do not reach the masses in placed like my purple state.
I personally see no other resort than massive public demonstrations to send a powerful message of resistance even for one day. The millions who participated in the Women's March in D.C. and around the world created a new movement for change. Have we become too complacent or just overly unrealistic to believe the Trump regime cannot possibly continue until 2016? Who can spearhead a massive march of resistance for all the world to witness? I'm too old and have forgotten how since the 60's. Let's get advice from the Parkland students. It is the future they will inherit that is at stake.
9
Miller, McConnell and Barr team.
The Republican members of Congress and especially McConnell and his cult of Senate enablers are supporting The Con Man in Chief in his assault of the rule of law.
Impeachment proceedings must start now. Barr and McConnell are the current twins of Paul von Hindenburg .
The Con Man in Chief and his cult leader in the white house Stephen Miller are breaking laws and firing all defenders of our constitution and the rule of law on a hourly basis .
Civil servants should be protected from the bullying and threats of The Con Man in Chief and miller. Congress must stop this destruction of our democracy .
Cabinet members and agency heads are threatened or fired if they do not abide by the dictator's demands and Barr and especially McConnell are enabling this unlawful purge.
The Senate Republicans are not abiding by their oath of office, protect and defend our constitution. McConnell is an embarrassment to the great state of Kentucky and to the Senate
5
I am sure you all remember the story of "Beauty and the Beast." I do. Especially the animated version.
We, the people of America, are both. Are we not?
Ms. Cottle, you speak eloquently of Mr. Trump's enablers. You remind us: not even Mr. Miller could single-handed steer the Trump administration into evil and heartless policies. You speak of people like Mr. Graham and others who (kicking and squirming) have let themselves be dragooned into the service of this dreadful man.
All well and good.
But never lose sight of Mr. Trump's REAL enablers.
Us.
We, the American people, are the Beast. Some of us. A good many of us. Millions of us. Millions of Americans who stand by cheering as children are torn from their parents, as hundreds and thousands are crowded into pens and tents and the Lord knows what all.
Mr. Trump would never venture upon such policies--
--if he were not sure of massive public support.
I am not saying every Trump supporter is "bestial." No no--that'd be going way too far! I would never say that.
But I"m sorry, Ms. Cottle. SOME of them are. There has always been a sleeping beast in the hearts of Americans. Waiting only for a little encouragement. A pat on the head. A bone. A morsel of meat.
Mr. Trump has flung them MANY bones. Steaks and chops and what not. They like those things. They want more.
Lots more.
He proposes to GIVE them more.
Lots more.
God help us all!
6
miller. . .what makes you think that trump will not do it to you?
3
What a farce. This is not only un-American, its inhuman. These people should be tried in The Hague.
7
Quit getting on President Miller's case. He has enough trouble trying to run the country with Trump botching his plans for the
"reeducation" camps.
5
Yes a “ society does fall” from a small coterie of bad actors. !!
Sometimes nytimes you miss the forest for the trees.
We are being gut punched daily by miller. He shouldn’t even be in the building.
Security is nil.
Disgust for the behavior of congress too.
Vote 2020. These times are so dangerous.
Violence is being encouraged at rallies and we are allowing this thru the do nothing word smiths in congress.
Pelosi I am disappointed.
2
My god. Just look at him. A picture is worth a thousand words.
5
@John B: They guy looks like he just stepped out of a coffin at sundown.
1
Thank you for this. So long as the many conservative "think tanks" exist to provide a soft landing for people like those in the current White House, we must see them with clear-eyed vision. They have done bad things for a bad person leading a bad government.
Just like I don't lose weight by thinking of all the donuts and ice cream I didn't eat, Ms. Nielson cannot claim to be a lovely woman of high morals because of a few foul things she refused to do.
She has tarnished our own image of our country--America is now disgusting in a way we haven't seen since Japanese internment and the segregationist/lynching era in the south. We will tell our children and grand-children how it was when powerful people put desperate parents and children in separate cages and then "lost" the kids. What is this? Some sneaky adoption plan for folks who don't want to wait for a cute little Russian baby? Vile, vile, vile.
3
@Paula: These quacks gain unwarranted legitimacy simply by being "academically" employed.
Whenever I see this guy in a picture or a video I always immediately think of the word Malevolent.
Malevolence practically ooozes off him.
3
Stephen Miller is a Godsend to this country . He realizes that Democrats do not want borders in order to increase their voting base. Miller is protecting the Federal Treasury from all the welfare, Medicaid, unpaid ER visits that illegal aliens use. There is a crisis and thankfully Miller is there.
1
@Mark Andrew: Mark, the people who are pressing at the borders mostly share much more religion and values with Republicans than with cosmopolitan liberals.
2
When the Trump nightmare leaves office in 2021, the incoming administration MUST take steps to hold Miller, Nielsen, Kelly and all of those who carried out their illegal orders to account. Down to and including the CBP agents who fire tear gas at mothers and children....no Nuremburg defense allowed.
It's the only way we, the people, will be able to clean the stain that these people have left on our country.
3
My best friends tell me that since leaving DHS, Ms. Nielsen is opening an adoption agency for Central American children abandoned by their non-caring, drug smuggling, morally corrupt, MS-13 gang member parents.
"Architect" and "genius" even modified by "evil" are not words I'd use to describe this contemptible, prematurely bald 30-year-old psychopath.
3
Miller in effect does act alone. Trump doesn't have the twisted imagination needed to come up with public policy atrocities, but he'll implement anything sufficiently evil that Miller puts before him. It's essentially a MasterBlaster-like singularity suffused with racism and cruelty.
2
@Eric Blair: Trump and Miller brainstorm together.
Not one person leaving Trump's administration has spoken honestly with us. ALL of them including Mattis, the other generals, Cohn, retiring congressmen..... have perpetuated the idea that there is some competency and leadership in the WH; they are ALL complicit in deceiving us.
It is clear even from the distance of a lonely voter that the WH is dysfunctional, corrupt and chaotic reeling from one self-contrived crisis to another as the ship of state alienates our allies and creates distrust, scorn and new enemies across the globe.
2
Miller and Trump merely reinforce each others ideas. Both are xenophobic for reasons only a forensic psychiatrist could explain.
Trump is POTUS with enormous powers as the Chief Executive.
He sets the policies and to date and it is only the Judicial Branch that has thwarted him.
If anyone expects the craven cowards in the Republican controlled Senate to live up to their constitutional duties you will be waiting for the Easter Bunny to deliver your chocolate eggs.
2
Never have any American president and minions been as blatantly destructive to the country this bunch is. Nay, it is time to say it: they're evil. Pure and simple - all the enablers, all the soldiers, the grown children, up to the man in the middle of it all, every single one of them.
2
This article characterizes Trump's anti-immigration proposals as outside international norms and Mr. Miller as "a force for darkness".
I'd encourage the author to try to immigrate to Japan, Argentina, India, Switzerland or numerous countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Putting this piece's melodrama aside, the fact is that the author's conception of "international norms" are out of step of how most countries operate their immigration policies.
Bigger picture, increasingly it seems editorials and stories about immigration in the New York Times are radically pro-immigration. Take a look at how the Times reported on a recent speech by Barack Obama vs. Breitbart. The Times ignored Obama's statements advocating for rational immigration limits, whereas Breitbart only reported on the those points:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/world/europe/obama-berlin-germany.html
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/04/09/barack-obama-cant-label-everyone-disturbed-by-immigration-as-racist/
Only if you bother to read multiple news outlets do you begin to see how news reporting is slanted.
3
Stephen Miller, honed his craft at Santa Monica HS offending minorities. He was considered brave by conservatives for his efforts to offend liberals. A badge he wears proudly-but he's stupid, and he's a puppet and now exposed because Trump's Flank is dwindling. He'll be thrown under the bus too......
5
After reading this operatic, pearl-clutching opinion piece the claim that democrats are not open-borders proponents seems increasingly specious.
2
Ms. Cottle forgets that the law, and a good number of Americans -- don't look now, but perhaps the majority -- is on Mr. MIller's side, not hers. These people do not qualify for asylum under the current rules.
Encouraging women and children to come North, as if there were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? IT's cruel. These workers have no way of legally supporting themseves when here. Welcome to a life of hiding, further traficking, and almost immediate pregnancy -- because the anchor baby angle is still legal...
When will today's Democrats tire of playing these illegal immigrants, stop encouraging them to exploit their children, and encourge the to stop making the journey to America's borders, only to learn the law too late?
I won't stoop to namecalling as Ms. Cottle did. But she should look at these thousands and thousands of poor women and children and realize, the costs of their journey is on the media and the liberals like her, who have no immigration plan but need pawns to bust the borders so they can "win". Sad!
Pull out your checkbooks and start donating your own salaries, please. The money has to come from somewhere...
1
@Midway
They will support themselves the way all immigrants do, by working hard for low wages and living lives at a standard of living that is below most Americans, even those on benefits. Living in substandard housing with many people sharing a room, having only emergency health care, having no pensions, no social security, no workman's compensation, no protection from greedy or criminal bosses, having to hide from law enforcement if they are subject to criminals or domestic violence.
They will work as housekeepers, care for the elderly, care for children, work in hotels, landscaping, etc with their kids possibly left alone ..
Their kids will get education .. but not very good since we don't want to teach them in Spanish or their native language (often not Spanish). They will face uncertain DACA standing even if they work hard .. or if born in the US, face the threat of their families being deported at any time.
Employers get all the benefits here .. and maybe you do too, through lower homeowner fees, meat prices, hotel rates, produce prices, cheap housekeeping, childcare or elder care .. etc.
1
@Innovator "They will support themselves the way all immigrants do, by working hard for low wages and living lives at a standard of living that is below most Americans,"
Um, they can do that just fine in their own countries.
1
@Midway
who is encouraging them?
Oh I see, Democrat, the evil villains....
Trump employs " illegals" in his various golf resorts by the way.
1
Michelle,
You use the word 'immigrant' to mean something that is not.
Nobody is against 'legal' immigration, of which the President has increased the 'working visa' amounts. Get some honesty in the meaning of your chosen words.
2
Any illegal alien who tried to bring children through a dangerous and illegal border crossing should have the children removed and be charged with child abuse.
My understand is that at least some of the adults who bring children with them during the illegal border crossing are the actual parents of the children.
2
John T, the word desperate comes to mind, these asylum seeking families risk their lives to flee their countries for many reasons....they are desperate people seeking a better life for their children, I have the greatest admiration for their courageous actions. Certainly not the actions of abusive parents.
1
“A fierce restrictionist, Mr. Miller seems to have rarely met an immigrant he didn’t want to deport.”
As always, the Times seems to have missed a word - “illegal” - in there. Makes a slight difference, agree?
3
@Jay Holder
a human being cannot be " illegal."
3
I just can't get the image brought to us by his elementary school teacher out of my mind: Miller sitting in a corner eating glue, I believe it was. He's a pretty sad human being, and he may be a racist but what he REALLY is is a troll. Gleeful in his destruction, loves to bait. Sadly he'll end up in some right wing think tank.
2
There is a fatal flaw in the Republican Party that is being exploited by The Trumpers.
Not all Republicans are racists but almost all racists are Republicans.
The dyed in the wool Republican is the "I am not a racist but...." variety.
Miller is hateful - his boss is a clueless con man - together they have mobilized the party base into believing the rhetoric while feeling the hate.
2
Only on this editorial page could enforcing our immigration laws and defending our borders be considered atrocities. I wish Miller the best of luck, both in deporting illegal aliens and in preventing an influx of yet more unskilled labor or, worse, social service sponges, from illegally entering our country.
"he’d like to give parents a 'binary choice' of having their kids taken from them or held with them in detention indefinitely."
In other words, parents who illegally cross the U.S. border with their children would be given the choice of having their children stay with them in detention, or their children released to a relative. The horror.
1
I’ve learned in my very long life (pun intended)...
When a major wrong or grave ill or evil injustice is being done, and you don’t condemn it with your counter-actions, you condone it with your silence.
There is a way to reform immigration policy and there are ways to regulate the border (just ask the immigration officials and customs on the border— they’ve dealt with it on a daily
basis— they know what is achievable).
But do the President, Senate or the Congress have the “Will” to do it?
To accomplish such measures, you have to step outside the bounds of selfish myopic thinking, and accept long term compromises.
After all, you’re dealing with “humans”.
2
The Trump administration is simply enforcing the law and wants to end illegal immigration. Once released into the US 93% of those who seek asylum do not show up for their court dates. Keep all the alleged family units together, get them a hearing within 45 days and then deport them. Phase 2 is shift to merit based immigration. Phase 3 is deport all illegal aliens. This will improve the labor participation and wages of low skilled US citizens plus save over $400B per year in welfare costs
1
So it appears that what we have here is a Miller – Hannity presidency with Trump as its front man.
1
Bush jr had Cheney and we have trump and miller. How sad
2
You forgot to mention the most heinous enablers of all--the American people who applaud these policies, and maybe worse, those who turn a blind eye.
137
I find it rich that Trump has been manipulating his base through fear, and now Trump is being manipulated through fear by Stephen Miller. Trump is desperate for a way to distract from the inevitable fallout when the public finally sees the Mueller report and his tax returns (we all know that both will be leaked one way or the other), right about the time his campaign is trying to gear up for 2020. Miller temps Trump with ever-more cruel and delicious fare to serve up to his brown-skin-hating base, and Trump is only too willing to jump at them. This is only going to get worse.
Slowly but surely America is slipping away as a democracy, as a republic, as a decent place to live. If it wasn't Stephen Miller doing it, it would have been Steve Bannon. The real horror is how many Trump supporters fail to understand what sort of history is being made here and where things are going. America is showing every sign of becoming a corrupt nation governed not of, by and for the people but run instead for the benefit of the richest and most intolerant people.
We have a president who is incapable of governing without being vengeful and childish. We have a senate majority leader who is an obstructionist and who loves power more than justice or doing the right thing for the country. We have seen vital information removed from government web sites. We've watched in absolute horror as more and more hate crimes are committed. What does our government do? Nothing because in Trump's eyes it's an immigration problem.
It's long past the time when Trump should have been removed from office with his entire cabinet. Not one of them is fit to serve this country the way it needs to be served and run.
1
No, Miller is not acting on his own. Millions of Americans voted for Trump and his horrific view of immigrants. So, House and Senate Republicans have veered to further to the right to keep the votes of Americans who also veered to the right as their racism became mainstream through Trump. These voters have felt free to express their racist beliefs. Miller is having his time but soon he will be out of fashion and blackballed for the racist he is.
Trump's deplorable policies whether they be legally or morally questionable are ultimately approved for implementation by his dictatorial seal of approval. Subordinates have three options: do what he says, try to change his mind or get out. If the former, the courts in a few cases have intervened to stop the policy, and Trump only gets more enraged, more extreme and more apt to lash out at his policy advisors. With Stephen Miller it seems he still has the president's ear on immigration but will the day come when he is ousted like Nielsen? One never knows with the Policy Maker-in-Chief who declares himself to be his own best advisor ruling from the gut with disregard for supporting facts and the sound judgement of others.
1
Miller shares the impact of Bannon on an administration more impressed with fierce presentation than deep wisdom.
Trump has no intellectual heft or knowledge; he responds to the attitude of unflagging 'certainty' & FOX style argument. He needs ideologues to bolster his fuzzy mindedness. For Trump & his base, the posture of adamance is all that counts.
Miller talks like a 10 year old with Asperger's. Machine gunning words, he must convince Trump that he provides an impenetrable position. Paranoid delusion shares this quality as well...
2
Steven Miller wouldn't exist today if the policies he advocates were in place when his descendants came to America.
1
@Gene Or if there wasn't a NEED for those policies.
3
@Gene, surely you mean "Miller's ancestors" not descendants who are yet to come...
Stephen Miller is only a glimpse of the example of why Jewish folks have come to represent hypocrisy, and why there is anti-semitism sentiments in the world today.
1
Miller is no genius - far from it. But Trump is pliable, incurious and uninterested in policy except for the applause lines he can generate from it at his rallies so Miller is indulged. It's some added convenience that Miller's mania intersects well enough with Trump's predisposition to casual and not so casual racism.
Yes it has taken the apparatus of the GOP to enable Miller's disgraceful influence but it's not a stretch to lie things like the Muslim ban, the wall shut down, the forced family separations and more at his feet - each one individually a generational shame for the country.
So sure it takes a village but this guy also knows he has this spineless party bowing to him so he's playing with all of the toys he always dreamed of. Is it so hard for the grown ups to take them away?
Stephen Miller can't act alone - without 12 million + undocumented aliens and hundreds of thousands of refugees hurling themselves at our border each month he wouldn't have a chair to stand on. Alas, he does.
5
Miller, Coulter, Hannity , Ingram, Bannon, Cain are the new faces of the GOP. All appeal to White nationalists, racists and xenophobes and the gun hugging crowd.
The GOP and Bush passed legislation in 2008 giving special asylum rights to women and children from Central America creating the current "crisis". The new GOP led by Trump will not repeal the asylum laws passed in 2008 because it helps Trump solidify his base by espousing hate filled rhetoric towards this protected group. Miller writes the rhetoric for the hate monger in chief and is untouchable.
GOP creates the problem and then uses it to firm up its base. Media and Congress cannot touch these political geniuses who will never be opposed by Trump.
1
Can we safely assume that Stephen Miller's ancestors were here to greet the arrival of our Native Americans when they crossed over from Asia via the Bering Strait?
3
Someone has to act the part of the adult in the room to pull Trump back from his worst instincts. It's a thankless job but the nation should appreciate these people for helping to keep a bad situation from getting much, much worse.
1
If Trump and Miller try this insane process of caging children and separating families, people need to go to these centers and bodily stop this from happening.
1
Stephen Miller the “ nouvelle “ Rasputin .
I wonder how long it will take before the 'real' white supremacists among Trump's torch-carrying neo-Nazi supporters decide that Stephen Miller is not one of their "fine people" but instead falls into the category of "Jews [who] will not replace us!"
2
This is a vicious and slanderous article on Steve Miller. He’s there to help do the job that Democrats won’t do. Stop “illegal” immigration. Period.
2
Another day another uproar over a Trump policy for which he gets the credit aided and abetted by the likes of children like Miller and his son-in-law. Honestly itis like this bunch is playing a video game and our country is the HQ. What we really need to know is who is the power base behind all this confusion. That is to whom to anger, frustration, and demands for change need to be made. The Fed? Who is most interested in this. The Big Money groups who are having a field day with Trump being twisted around their every illegal scheme. He is only the figure head but who is the real power at the top and what will save us from them not the idiot inchief.
As a 9/11 survivor and a New Yorker, I’m a proud American of East Indian descent. I simply idolize our cherished democracy, specially the quote from the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
Unfortunately, Mr. Trump shattered the “E pluribus Unum” motto of our country by his divisive, deplorable and disturbing demagoguery: “Mexicans are drug dealers, criminals and rapists”.
Mr. Trump’s own mother was a Scottish immigrant and his paternal grandfather was a German Immigrant. Two of Mr. Trump’s wives are immigrants.
Mr. Miller is of Jewish faith - his own uncle Dr. Glosser said “If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out”. He referred to Mr. Miller as an “Immigration Hypocrite”,
Ms. Kirstjen Jenson implemented the family separation policy separating approximately 2,000 children from their families. It may take up to 2 years to unite these impacted families. This is very much a CRIME against HUMANITY.
Mr. Trump frequently refers to our “Asylum Policy” as a SCAM”. One of my very close friends’ mother and her family fled Nazi Germany after the Kristallnacht and luckily avoided being victims of the Holocaust. They came here as “Asylum Seekers”.
Sorry Mr Trump - the “Asylum Policy” of our fabled “land of the free and home of the brave” country is not a “SCAM” - it provides refuge to the huddled masses the opportunity to breathe FREE 🇺🇸👍
2
@Raj Sinha, not only was Mr Trump's mother Scottish but she came to America to escape abject poverty in her village, "indescribably filthy" and characterized by "human wretchedness". "She worked as a domestic servant for at least four years. One of these jobs appears to have been as a nanny for a well-to-do family in a New York suburb, but the position was eliminated due to economic difficulties caused by the Great Depression. As one account has put it, she "started life in America as a dirt-poor servant escaping the even worse poverty of her native land."
1
How about we treat all them racist and xenophobes the same way we treated the German racists and xenophobes in the 1940's?
Do I have to say the end of a barrel is the only place I want my racists?
1
S. Miller hates Jews so much that he changed his last name and his biologic family has distanced themselves from him.
One need not be anti-Semitic to dislike Mr. Miller.
4
I think the challenge here which the Dems dont get is that they are elected to protect our freedom. Constitutional rights and protect us. Trying to emulate the EU’s come stay live we pay strategy is a disaster. Better control is needed. Illegals should not be released hoping they show up for hearings. Every day brings more murders robberies rapes assaults by illegals. There should be 0. They do not belong here
The writer did the nation a service by his column "outing" this kid Miller who strikes me as the kind that spends hours perusing hate sites where he might get some of his extreme ideas to pass on to you know who. As for the other actors in this administration, I respected Mattis but the rest just seem like paid off hacks to me.
2
We're on our way to making the mistakes some Germans made after WWII, where blame for the Nazi atrocities was ascribed to a group of people at the top running the government and not to the larger society who placed them there.
Miller's authoritarian rant in early 2017 sealed it for me. It had all the zeal of a Brown Shirts rally. As noted by some of his family, Miller has forsaken his Jewish heritage.
Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoers the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make evil appear good instead of bad in the evildoer’s own and others’ eyes, so that he will not hear reproaches and curses but will instead receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their will: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of the Motherland; the Nazis, by invoking race...
Without evildoers, there would have been no Gulag Archipelago.
—- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
Well I for one generally oppose Trump, but mainly because he (amusingly) managed to go bankrupt while owning and running several casinos. That is proof he is a fool (not a good manager) and a financial idiot.
However, and still, the American people gave him enough votes to win the electoral college vote and the office. Now it is true that his campaign was probably funded and assisted by Russian money and he probably violated various campaign finance laws. He was already known to have been laundering money for the Russians. And yet much of this was known during or soon after the election, and even when it ALL came out, his base STILL supported him. They still do.
So when we rail on and on about enablers, gnashing our teeth and all the rest, the (ignorant) American people (about 40% of the population) are to blame for this, not exactly people like Mnuchin and John Kelly and the rest. And the Democrats decided to run a baggage-laden woman as their candidate.
If at this point we want to go after anyone, in terms of shame, it has to be the Senate Republicans, who are utterly without shame, apparently. And proof that you can live without a spine.
In any event, some "facts:" this anti-immigrant fervor is a "winning" conservative issue for Trump, and he knows it. The Senate has the choke-chain attached to their dog/Trump, if they want to use it. Trump knows his (mainly ignorant) base HATES liberals and immigrants. So anything that liberals hate makes the Trump base happy.
Please stop calling this disgusting racist a "hardliner."
Have you seen the video of him giving a speech at Santa Monica High where he says he is sick of being told to pick up his own trash when there are plenty of janitors to do that for him?
(I didn't make that up.)
So this completely amoral grotesque brat is put in charge, and we have children ripped from their parents' arms and put in cages.
History is not going to reflect well on the Trump enablers. They are monsters in plain sight.
3
The majority of people who work for Trump fit a mold. They are loud, arrogant, overweight, and incompetent. These are the same characteristics that Trump exhibits.
1
Remember Rolfe, the young Nazi soldier in “The Sound of Music”? Stephen Miller makes him look like a teddy bear. So young, how does someone get so evil? How does a country get so convoluted?
The Trump/Miller/Kelly/Nielsen imposed fear of “national threat” - fear of children from South of the Border. This is what our “Homeland Security” is saving us from?
Stephen Miller is Trump’s new Roy Cohn. Interesting that the lower the integrity of his muse, the higher they are elevated in his eyes.
3
Spot on! Thank you.
2
Can we please get rid of the expression “overly simplistic.” “Simplistic” means “overly simple.”
2
Stephen Miller is the poster child for The Banality of Evil!
4
Funny because he himself is the grandson of Jewish immigrants so of all people he should have more empathy for the immigration problem - his policies seem really inhumane and evil considering the emotional damage they have inflicted on poor defenseless people.
3
Stephen Miller and his family are American citizens because his ancestors were economic refugees who fled anti-Semitic violence in Belarus and chain-migrated here.
The Glosser (Miller) family came to the US just before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of the day closed US borders to Jewish refugees.
Miller's great-grandfather set foot on Ellis Island in 1903, with $8 to his name; he was fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish and understood no English.
https://politi.co/2OwLKfJ
Miller's Uncle David Glosser has thoroughly rejected the black hole of ill will that his nephew has become.
As Miller's uncle wrote:
"Trump wants to make us believe that these desperate migrants are an existential threat to the United States; the most powerful nation in world history and a nation made strong by immigrants. Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their political base to justify persecution of all Jews. Almost every American family has an immigration story of its own based on flight from war, poverty, famine, persecution, fear or hopelessness. Most of these immigrants became workers, entrepreneurs, scientists and soldiers of America."
Dump Trump 2020
15
@Socrates, good luck there Socrates...hope you can stall the Jexits and the Jexoduses..
1
"Her share of atrocities." A wee bit over the top, no?
3
Regardless, Miller is the embodiment of pure evil. He is a stain on humanity. We saw what happened in Nazi Germany, how many lives would have been saved if monsters like Goebbels were eliminated before their murderous fantasies were actualized? We are playing too nice, time to fight back.
3
None of us thought this could happen, except that it has happened before. Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Co., following the darkest line in the country's history of enslaving black Americans, excluding Chinese immigrants, imprisoning Japanese Americans, and turning away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The administration has been empowered by the failure of Republican legislators to act, a stasis that shows no sign of ending, and 18 Democratic candidates fighting for the spotlight don't make me hopeful. What next?
5
The Trump administration has never had a child separation policy. It separates migrant children from their parents to comply with a federal court order issued in 2015 by Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court Dolly Gee. She ruled children who cross the border illegally with their parents must be treated the same as unaccompanied children who cross the border illegally. They can not be held in custody with their parents but must be transferred to Department of Health and Human Services childcare centers.
As a member of the New York Times editorial board, Michelle Cottle cannot be unaware of Judge Gee’s ruling because the New York Times has reported on it many times. It has also reported on the Obama administration’s unsuccessful attempt to appeal Judge Gee’s ruling. Referring to child separation as President Trump’s or Stephen Miller’s policy is a lie. If the New York Times thinks Judge Gee’s ruling is “child snatching,” it should criticize Judge Gee, not President Trump or Stephen Miller.
What the New York Times appears to want open borders, but is afraid to say so. It obviously thinks illegal border crossers should not be inconvenienced by the Border Patrol. If the Times had its way, illegal immigrants would not have to raft the Rio Grande or make a desert crossing. They would simply take notifications to appear at immigration hearings set years in the future from dispensing machines as they pass through legal ports of entry.
3
No one wants ‘open borders’ and repeating this simplistic phrase betrays a lack of independent research. Trump’s child separation policy is depraved and immoral, and he and his Administration own it.
2
@Iain
Nonsense. If the Trump administration had its way, it would hold children in custody with their parents, The Obama initially complied with Judge Gee's ruling by separating children from their parents and sending them to child care centers.
There is no doubt that President Donald Trump is a cruel, narrow minded xenophobic, misanthrope. No he doesn't just hate women, he hate all of us. His efforts of accelerate the increasing sever efforts of climate change is overshadowed by his declared self created national emergency. There is little doubt that the real National Emergency is this monster creature sitting in the Oval Office.
6
No one should ever use the term “genius” in referring to Miller. “Machiavellian” absolutely. “Evil”, “Cruel”, “Nationalist”, sure. “Facist” maybe. “Genius” - no way. Talking Trump into harsh immigration policies is like talking children into eating candy. Any other child can do it.
2
If Stephen Miller is such a genius, Trump ought to nominate him as DHS Secretary. (Max Boot has also suggested this. My guess is that such a nomination will not happen, because it would require Senate confirmation, that would also make the Republicans in the Senate complicit in Miller's actions.)
I think that he would be an utter failure, and that his neo-Nazi rantings would be shown for what they are - the babbling of a twisted mind.
He is a speechwriter, and a bad one at that.
Let him be the face of the utter cruelty that he espouses.
When Trump leaves office, which I expect will occur on January 20, 2021, both Trump and Miller can be arrested, tried and convicted for crimes against humanity.
5
Still waiting for the Democrats policy on immigration....
2
@Ed In 2013, under Obama, the Senate Democrats, plus 14 Republicans, passed a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. It never made it to the floor of the House for discussion, amendments and a vote, because the then Republican speaker (Bohmer?) refused to allow this (afraid of giving Obama a victory?). This Republican obstrructionism is nothing new and neither is there hipocrissy when they shamelessly claim that the Democrats have done nothing on immigration. So, we are now waiting for the Republican policy on immigration -- other than demonizing immigrants, putting children in cages, separating them from their parents, and ignoring existing assylum laws. We are also waiting for the Republicans Infrastructure Bill, the "beautiful" Healthcare Bill, and the "beatiful wall" that Mexico would pay for, among other unfulfilledm promises by the orange, buffoon sitting in the Oval Office.
1
The Trump administration has never had a child separation policy. It separates migrant children from their parents to comply with a federal court order issued in 2015 by Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court Dolly Gee. She ruled children who cross the border illegally with their parents must be treated the same as unaccompanied children who cross the border illegally. They can not be held in custody with their parents but must be transferred to Department of Health and Human Services childcare centers.
Michelle Cottle cannot be unaware of Judge Gee’s ruling because the New York Times has reported on it many times. It has also reported on the Obama administration’s unsuccessful attempt to appeal Judge Gee’s ruling. Referring to child separation as President Trump’s or Stephen Miller’s policy is a lie. If the New York Times thinks Judge Gee’s ruling is “child snatching,” it should criticize Judge Gee, not President Trump or Stephen Miller.
The New York Times thinks the Trump administration should not arrest or detain parents who bring children with them as they cross the border illegally. Instead of inconveniencing therm, Custom and Border Protection could could set up vending machines at the ports of entry to dispense notifications to appear at hearings set in the distant future to all migrants who have children but no visas. This appears to be what the Times actually wants.
1
I don't understand why there isn’t more of a public outcry in the form of protests (like in the Vietnam War days) of the American government’s immigration atrocities all committed willingly in plain sight on American soil - snatching kids from parents, keeping people in fenced cage like enclosures, keeping people in cold inhospitable detention centres, not allowing for timely processing of asylum claims to name just a few.
It feels like the American public is complacent or perhaps I’m just not hearing about protests or lobbying of elected government representatives. Please tell me you haven’t all just turned a blind eye to what I think will be judged as human rights abuses.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand there is a border crisis with the numbers flowing across (legally and illegally) and reformed immigration laws need to be passed as well as improved border security measures put in place.
I just don’t know why, looking in from the outside, I don’t see more outrage.
2
Agreed. We ended the Draft, the Vietnam War, and eventually Nixon’s criminal Administration through protests, boycotts, peaceful disobedience. Couldn’t agree more.
1
I think all intelligent people know that Mr. Miller is a self-loathing hack who simply wants attention. Surely someone will one day write a book about him - a child of liberals who, as far as I can tell, simply spouts the most vile things as a way to get attention. Kind of reminds me of a certain First Daughter trying to tell us working class folks that we don't want anything "given to us." The very heights of hypocrisy.
But as others have pointed out, we live in a age where such people as Mr. Miller somehow wiggle their way into powerful circles. He could never get elected to anything, so he will manipulate behind the scenes, occasionally trotting out to a tv interview with his painted on hair and his neo-Nazi ideas. Such is life.
I have full faith however in the reckoning of God and the long memory of karma. One day, all of these people will get their comeuppance. I just hope I'm around to see it
4
@Willie734: In the absence of required standards of conduct that must at least be met to participate, the bad can drive the good out of any human activity.
2
Right. The Banality of Evil.
Everything trump touches dies.
4
@koobface If that's true then the Northern Triangle migrants would be well-advised to steer clear of the USA by several thousand miles.
3
Miller is not a 'restrictionist'. He's a racist xenophobe with extraordinary staying power in Trump's nebular admin. He drives Trump's actions because Trump is easily influenced.
5
It has taken a village to enable Stephen Miller - or, in this case, several thousand villages to our south, emptying their denizens and exporting them in caravans towards an America that is overwhelmed with problems of its own, including over twelve million undocumented immigrants whose contempt for our laws is second only to Trump's.
6
You nailed it. All of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants are criminals. Reference ‘self loathing.’
@Valery Gomez All attempts at "comprehensive immigration reform" (which are really just gussied up versions of the epic fail that was the 1986 amnesty) have failed. They have failed because enough Americans don't want to see this nation overrun and turned into a perpetual triage center of the developing world's persistent failures.
3
"I vus just following orders"
I expect to be hearing a lot of that in the coming years.
9
While reading this list of those enacting their dark ideology I was struck by who was not mention. Unindicted Co-conspirator was not mentioned, and I didn't miss his name at first. It's as though he is now a force of nature. It's more than just being beyond redemption. We don't like saying it out loud, but come on. It's more than just being untouched by ethical criticism. Hasn't he proven that he's beyond the law? There's a word for this that none less than Madeleine Albright put in the title of her recent book. (Are we afraid to say it?). Don't we need to start discussing this now? Isn't this a flaw in our politics that needs fixing before it becomes an institution?
3
I think this is the most well-grounded opinion piece I've read on this subject. Amazing anyone would say Nielson "deals in reality". Was that so when she told Congress her department didn't have a policy of separating children from their parents. But speaking of reality: Trump threatens to reinstate the child snatching, then he says he didn't, then he says it was Obama who caged children while he, himself, stopped the practice ... and now I read he's posted a really bizarre film clip. This president is doing everything but prancing across the White House lawn naked, and people are still discussing his policies seriously as if things are relatively normal. No one suggests that he get a psychiatric exam. Surely governments have a plan for what to do if the president starts acting this out of touch with reality?
210
@Anne Sherrod Kudos, I am not the only one that claims how enlightening this article of opinion is. About psychiatric examination, it has been said and suggested many, many times since the beginning of his presidency and even "diagnosed" as narcissistic but unfortunately, nobody can make him to see a psychiatrist or any other physician except in the case that he can do harm to himself or others. On the other hand, I think that eventually there will be amendments to the Constitution, so we do not have to deal with such a kind of president in the future. In any case, let us hope that 2020 will give us no such quagmire.
29
@samuel a alvarez - Thanks, Samuel, I do share your hope that out of this travesty there will be more controls put on the presidency in the future.
22
@Anne Sherrod Thank you. In regard to Miller and Trumputin. Most of us now clearly know that the affliction of narcissism is and means. Now the added affliction being discussed is the Dunning Kruger Effect. The combination of the two is unique. It is also deadly. Advice: Do not sign up to work for Trump. Your entire future and reputation will be permanently ruined.
4
As awful as President Trump and Mr. Miller are as human beings, and as destructive as their actions may be, they are what they are - nasty, vicious, amoral men with no empathy but for them and theirs.
But as Ms. Cottle points out, it takes a dystopian village to protect such individuals. People like Senator Graham from my state are willing to trade whatever moral compass they once owned for proximity to power and personal aggrandizement (not to mention re-election). Now that Senator Graham golfs with Mr. Trump, the President's most heinous policies are okay? The senior Senator from South Carolina must be a world class athlete of mental gymnastics and compartmentalization to embrace Mr. Trump's polices now, ideas the Senator once roundly criticized as a Presidential candidate.
What moral rot.
571
@jrinsc
and the level of hypocrisy.
We should all wonder if Senator Graham would act differently if the Late Senator John McCain was still around.
23
@jrinsc. “ it takes a dystopian village...”. Thank you for that.
21
@jrinsc Graham is a user. He used McCain to raise his own profile until McCain was of no further use, then it was onto someone else and that was Trump. But as long as the media falls for Graham's 'aw shucks' routine, he won't change.
21
Michelle Cottle makes an excellent point about Stephen Miller. He is not an evil genius and would never have acquired such influence under a normal president.
But for the ignorance, basic personal bigotry and obvious incompetence of Donald Trump, Miller would have remained what he probably has been since puberty: a precociously glib, deeply unhappy punk who realizes that his only chance at fame is to say and do outrageously nasty things.
The enablers of President Trump on the question of immigration have been men and women who are long on ambition and short on courage and ethics.
People like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Paul Ryan are undoubtedly happy to have Stephen Miller around to blame when the cruel Trump policy turns sour.
438
@sdw, good points. Goebels wasn't an evil genius either; he was just pure evil. No genius about it.
4
Got it, he can't do what he does alone. But too little attention is paid to his age, his lack of experience, his dominant attitudes as he whispers evil into incompetent DJT ears. Miller's background is loathsome, and at 33, he shouldn't command such power even at the nod of Donald . . . we seem to have no power at all when a person so horribly wrong for our world rises to do more wrong within a corrupt administration. Surely if the light shines more on his right wing notions, he might be pushed out. Maybe he can return to work for Sessions, now gone. Be gone, Steven Miller; may you find a patch of good in your dark world.
72
@Judith R. Birch
Trump wants him around because he is only 33; he is unformed , inexperienced and easily manipulated. Miller is doing what Trump tells him to do , and Miller swoons at the attention from "the boss".
4
A little off topic, but I have been struck by all the ink spilled over the young Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg wondering if his tender age of 37 is TOO YOUNG for the Presidency. Stephen Miller is 33 and seems to be allowed to run the country (albeit into the ground..)
211
@Wreckluse
“If it bleeds, it leads.”
Incentive structures are everything.
My father was the HR head for a large, established company. After being taken over in a leveraged buy-out, he was ordered to by the new owners to carry out widespread layoffs to pay for the new debt where once they had none. He rationalized to me the standard line propagated by the hostile takeover experts spawned from the Harvard Business School at the time that it would make the old stodgy business he worked for more lean, mean and profitable. I told him they would probably fire him after they made him fire a boatload of people. He scoffed at my cynicism as he understandably didn't want to face a very dark prospect. He was sacked at 55 years of age after 30 years of honest, hard work. The company did indeed become lean and mean, but decidedly less profitable. In fact, it is a shell of its former self. My point is, even good people can be sucked into the destructive vortex of greed. It takes a robust and committed effort to see through the barrage of delusional narratives, immense moral grit in the face of overwhelming pressure to conform, and the willingness to give up everything to take a stand against legitimized evil.
127
@Anam Cara
The company might have become a shell of itself, but the new owners probably did quite well personally. (The Sears saga is an example. The old airline TWA is another.)
And that is the purpose, to enrich the new owners at the expense of the current employees. Economic investment it is not.
36
@Anam Cara
I hope your Dad and you are ok.
9
@Anam Cara. Mr Miller is an adult and can see the end results of his actions. It's the total lack of empathy for others plight that strikes me. Mr Miller needs to spend a few days in migrants shoes. What better way than to strip him of citizenship and place him in Mexico.
7
Having watched Miller on a rare occasion when he directly faced the press, it is clear that he is an unusually, perhaps singularly, arrogant and insensitive individual. Yet he clearly has Trump's ear. JRR Tolkien might say that Miller is Trump's Wormtongue. There are many bad callous bad actors in this show, but Miller is a particularly nasty instigator, a special case who deserves to be personally called out.
183
@Redant-I agree, and I would add to that he should be called out by prominent Jewish leaders. Stephen Miller is a Jew and yet he shows zero adherence to the religious values that has formed the basis of many of the world's religions. If Netanayhu can be questioned, surely can be also.
12
@Mark Jared and Ivanka are Jews too. They observe shabat . Jared's family survived the holocaust but they are Jews in name only. It isn't your religion that makes you a good person, but what you do for humanity. Jared is a good friend of the Saudi prince who is responsible for a journalist's death and, most likely, hundreds more. Miller is an evil man.
4
i never thought that a racist like Stephen Miller could rise to the top echelon of a president’s inner circle but here he is as point man on immigration appealing to nativists for 2020.
It seems clear that Trump will turn to the southern border as his focus in 2020 and Miller will try to move Trump and his followers even more to the right on immigration.
How can republicans like Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lindsey
Graham and Marco Rubio tolerate a guy like Stephen Miller advising the president on immigration and keep silent about it?
596
@JT FLORIDA,
the four Senators all have been holding their finger in the wind, none of them showed any kind of statesmanship in the past either.
186
The people in Maine that voted for Collins ,like me, are not happy with her. I doubt she will run in 2020. Every one I know will no longer vote for her.
118
@Sue Yes, but she just raised lots of money from out-of-state. I will never vote for her.
30
Cutting aid to Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, thus exacerbating the conditions giving rise to requests for asylum, has all the markings of Stephen Miller. That Miller has a host of collaborators in this cynical move is evident, and labeling it Machiavellian is undoubtedly appropriate, but less obvious is the fact that Machiavelli was more intelligent.
Miller’s stupidity should not be underemphasized. Bannon’s influence was evil, but Bannon showed some reasonable amount of intelligence. Miller Is both evil and dumb. He’s not strictly Machiavellian, as Bannon can be characterized. Let’s call him Machiavellian-lite. He seems to live in a world of labels... sobeit.
82
You have just described in a nutshell why democracy in America these days is on the endangered species list; and Trumpocracy is in fact an Authoritarian hostile takeover of America hiding in plain sight. All it takes for evil to succeed is for "good" (???) people to stand by and do nothing. And talk about a bunch of DO NOTHINGS. The entire G.O.P. cannot wash their hands of this stinking evil. Miller may be the henchman; but they are all willing accomplishes. America is quickly becoming a land of fascist and sickening men and women who willingly bend and break the law to suit their hard core take over of what is left of America. Constitution and the rule of law and decency be damned.
1
People like Miller have the bull by the horns because so many Americans don't care, vote, or read. Tens of Millions of Americans don't even know who the hell he is. Therefore, it's basically too late. This is how we got Trump and how a democracy dies.
2
Stephen Miller looks, acts and speaks like Roy Cohn, which is why Trump clutches him close.
4
Agree! ...I thought the line "I was only following orders" ended in 1945 with the end of the Nazi regime. This whole policy is pathetic and tragic.
There is now a movement afoot to deny former administration officials cushy corporate or academic jobs. Let's hope everyone involved is held to account.
2
@REK
The first time I hears those words were
in the mid 1970s from an American Army
officer named William Calley, giving
testimony as to how a massacre of
innocents occurred in the VietNam war.
The irony of this all is that Stephen Miller is an immigrant, or the son of an immigrant. An article written by his Uncle, appeared a little while ago in either the Politico (or Atlantic - do not remember which one), expressing utter surprise at his nephew's approach and behavior. The family enjoyed and benefited from the US immigration system. How does someone like Stephen Miller show gratitude to this country? Does he have a conscience?
What is more appalling is witnessing the inaction on the part of the Republican party members. When they do not ask questions or challenge the actions of someone like Stephen Miller, only tells us that the party is in agreement.
4
Get real! Trump is too inept, particularly in the area of governing 300 million people, to pull off a coup (implied in many recent comments to NYT).
1
Is the language of migration evil, hate and racism?
There is at heart of the immigration scam a nasty and evil ideology functioning - like what happened in the 1930's Germany.
Lets be honest that Beto is absolutely accurate when he said that using the language of the Nazis is what Trump and his henchmen are using to dehumanize human beings
because they are brown and black asylum seekers.
Lets be honest - this is racism and the politics of hate.
#Expose Miller as the main man of hate
3
McKay Coppins’ piece in The Atlantic almost one year ago about Miller is worth a read.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/561317/
This guy is a punk...and troll.
3
Where does this twerp Stephen Miller come from? Who does he think he is?.....and who let him in the White House ?
I predict he will have a rough life after this gig.
2
When Trump realizes that Miller's policies will not bode well for him, Miller will be out. Trump has loyalty only to himself.
2
Sociopaths Steve Miller, Steve Bannon play out their mental pathologies on the backs of other people, 24/7. And they get rich from it. Responsible people must put a stop to this travesty.
3
A Democratically weakened and criminally runned country gets what it deserves. We have taken our eyes off the ball for decades through laziness and through overwork. The wolves are firmly in charge. Hold on to your wallets.
1
And then there is Thad Bingle, a job-holder in both the W. presidency and the Trump presidency, inventing the excuse that Trump was given "bad advice" by his advisors. As if Trump didn't announce his candidacy and conduct his entire campaign on an astoundingly anti-immigration platform. In the Washington spin-cycle, the buck travels up and down and all around, and never stops anywhere. It's always somebody else who made every single one of them do it.
1
Everyone should read Vanity Fair Magazine's piece on Stephen Miller. They spoke to people that know him and went on record. Not one person had anything good to say about him. When he was on CNN with Jake Tapper, Miller was ranting and raving and Tapper cut him off and went to a commercial. When Tapper came back on the air he said "To our viewers at home, welcome back to planet earth." Miller had to be escorted off the set and out of the CNN building.
4
A most valuable reminder that, however ruthless Stephen Miller is (as is his cluelessly and cruelly maladapted president), we, as intolerant people, have a role in allowing this unnecessary chaos by dehumanizing non-white folks, however desperate they might be, by seeking asylum from violence at home...only to encounter vicious violence in these United States, cruel beyond measure and even counter to international norms and agreements to be a 'good samaritan'. As much as I hate to admit, if this abuse of governmental power goes on unopposed, there won't be any redemption for us folks complacent with this gross injustice. And if so, we fully deserve these unscrupulous thugs in the White House, and it's complicit republicans in congress 'a la McConnell', and rot in our own mess, and lose our miserable spirit in the process. Is this really what we want, a deadly bigotry by selling our souls?
1
As a Jew, I find Miller reprehensible. I'm not alone, his family finds him reprehensible as well and has gone out of their way to let the public know. No 33 year old kid with no experience dealing with immigration has become Trump's brain on the issue. A truly sad and sordid state of affairs.
6
The only thing worth knowing about Stephen Miller is what was written by his uncle, a retired neuropsychologist and brother of Miller's mother, namely David Glosser. He points out that their immigrant family fled the persecution of Jews in Belarus to reach Ellis Island in the early 1900s, something Miller seems to forget. This is what Miller's uncle wrote:
" I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country. I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants — been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America first” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family likely would have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him." Nuff said.
10
Stephen Miller needs to be deported back to Russia, according to his own statutes.
2
Huge support over many years by white Evangelicals and white Catholics. This is what they voted for. Far right white Catholics now control the Supreme Court. They would not be Republican if they did not support Trump’s world view. It does take a village. Trump rose out of the Republican Party for a reason.
2
There is no question that the mass migration of people under serious duress needs to be addressed, and that requires serious support for rule of law and social stability through education, job training and investment in places such as Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Southern Mexico. Since the ruling US crime families in the white house, cabinet and republican Senate no longer value rule of law, social stability through education, job training and investment US Citizens, it is a lost cause to think they would be interested in dealing effectively with the brutal causes of migration out of central America. Solutions abound, but the will is directed rather to doing business with despots like Mohammed bin Salman, Vladimir Putin Jair Bolsonaro, and other fine fascists and money launderers. The USA is no less than a terrorist government that abuses its own taxpayers to carry out the murderous dictates of its ruling corporations.
2
Stephen Miller has successfully found a way to become a Trump body part, and has succeeded because we have a beyond weak minded president. Miller's need to be up front and close to power is his driving force to become Trump's twin. For Miller, human beings of color are nothing more than a pawn to increase his power to control Trump's chaotic thought process whose foundation is rooted in racism and bigotry. Perfect fit. Preying on the weak and defenseless is always a coward's first choice.
Stephen Miller seems to be now the one playing "Dick Cheney" to Trump ("GW").
1
"But there is much guilt to go around, and even reluctant collaborators cannot be allowed to absolve themselves of responsibility for the administration’s continuing outrages."
"Reluctant" collaborators? Really, Ms. Cottle? I see very little reluctance from Republicans. Many of them are actively encouraging Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller to continue on their vicious and cruel path. Whether they are applauding or whether they are silent, they are complicit. It doesn't matter if they are calculating apparatchiks like Mitch McConnell or sheep in sheep's clothing like Susan Collins, they obviously feel there is political capital to be made on the immigration issue. It's up to us, the voters, to tell them firmly they are wrong.
We have been cut loose and are drifting far away from our most cherished ideals as a beacon of freedom and tolerance. Unless the GOP is thrown out of office en masse in 2020, we will soon be too far offshore to be rescued.
304
@Jimbo
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the actual GOP is still resisting things this American President wants to do.
They believed everything the biased news media said about him for a year, and only resucued theworkers' families with a tax cut and employment miracle late in 2017.
Can you imagine thethings that could have been fixed if his own party in Congess solidly backed him for a couple of years?
But the Republican Party is far more varied than the opposition, and it actually includes people who would have been liberal Democrats thirty years ago.
Go read Rand Paul's statement on his recent vote against the Prez.
When the political Right composes highlight reels of idiotic-sounding news-readers on TV preaching judgment on Stephen Miller, you KNOW Democrats have become a joke.
A child of Abraham and Sarah is now a ''White Nationalist?'' (Whatever THAT is this week.)
@Jimbo - While I agree w/ your sentiments re: the general amorality of today's (R)s, I'm bemused by our dogged determination to believe in "our most cherished ideals as a beacon of freedom and tolerance" - our insistence that, somehow, someway, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we're "better" than previous Empires du Jour.
True, we haven't impaled the heads of "the conquered" on pikes lining the roads. However, our country was founded in warfare over money, religion and power; expanded through genocide; grew rich through slavery and environmental degradation; extended our power through near-constant warfare…
At any given point, we've denied "freedom and tolerance" to women, Irish, Italians, Asians, brown-skinned folks, the poor and disadvantaged - any and all of the powerless "them" that we could construe as being different from the powerful "us".
If only we were willing to view ourselves honestly, and realize how far we've strayed from the concepts of "freedom and tolerance" put forth by our Founding Fathers, maybe we could/would do better?
2
@Miss Anne Thrope
It's true that as a country our government with plenty of willing adherents we've done some incredibly really horrible things.
But we have this amazing document that spells out what we are supposed to be as a nation. Many people still find it inspirational and aspirational. Everyday there are reminders that as a people we are not so terrible.
Listening to Jon Meacham lectures help me remember that while not perfect, forever we strive to live up to the promise of our nation. Things have been equally terrible as they are now, but we have still progressed. This too shall pass.
OK, the Dems listen to you they dig themselves into a deeper hole.
The overwhelming number of the asylum seekers do not meet the qualifications. They have no right to be in the US. We may be cruel and not care about their circumstances, or we may care. That doesn't change the facts. What are you going to do about it? What are the Dems going to do about it?
17
@Audaz
Well, the Republicans' solution doesn't seem to be working very well either.
12
@Audaz
I wish this could be a Nyt pick. It really needs addressing. We can analyze the GOP until the cows come home, but the US needs solutions.
3
@Audaz
You're correct that most of the asylum seekers do not end up being successful in their quest for asylum. That doesn't mean it's illegal to request asylum. Quite the opposite.
We need a multi-faceted solution to immigration. One that our current system of federal government has seemed to be wholly unable to deliver on. One aspect of that solution, however, would seem to be a radical increase in resources devoted to processing asylum claims so that they can be done more quickly.
This doesn't align with Trumps plan, of course.
14
Defining the degrees of evil in the Trump Administration only gets one to the same bottom line.
This Administration is evil.
1
Not one single policy recommendation in this entire essay.
2
@Armando Cedillo
The writer had a point to make, and she made it. These opinion pieces are not open-ended on word length.
No doubt many people on the Times editorial board have policy recommendations. Perhaps the Times will give them space to propose and explain their suggestions.
There's plenty of Republican guilt to go around, above all Trump's base of thoughtless and immoral True Believers. When will the NY Times have the courage to write a accurate critical article about Trump's base, not just Republican immoral enablers like Alice Steward and Scott Jennings and, of course, Slimy Lindsey Graham, McConnell and Jim Jordan?
1
Trump sees his presidency as some version of his business; a small circle of devoted, tho not very creative or bright people dying to follow him and bask in reflected glory. Sarah Sanders could be replaced by a robot. Ditto for Conway, Nielsen. Mnuchin slick to the point of nausea.
This was totally clear after the Flynn firing, then Comey, then Sessions ... probably left some out. Nobody with a shred of independence or originality lasts; just a matter of time.
To make life easier he should clone a dozen Jareds and Don Jrs. Add a few Erics for variety. Insert info which reflects his brilliant view about one specific cabinet area into each clone.
Then bring in Miller. Give him a whip and a bullhorn.
1
Miller is pure evil. He seeks to inflict pain on others because he himself has always been so completely disliked and reviled. Yes, it elevates him to think of these immigrants as lower than himself. He and the money behind him is evil. Someday we can hope that he may experience the same that he dishes out. I can see him now easily behind bars and really not enjoying it. It’s coming Steve.
5
Prediction: Trump will increasingly be plagued with rumbling on the right due to his tax cut for the rich that so far has yielded no benefit for the working class and his obsessive focus on the wall and the southern border. No infrastructure plan, no jobs program, no training programs, increasing healthcare costs -- no nothing for the vulnerable working class that elected Trump. If the economy starts to slow, the Democratic nominee can simply sing the golden oldie "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" and the answer will be NO. If the president got his wall tomorrow, it would do nothing for his base. If he slaps tariffs on cars manufactured in Mexico for American companies, which is just crazy, it will do nothing for the working class while hurting American companies. Soon Trump will face a public profoundly disinterested in the wall, the southern border, Central Americans, all of it, a public who says "What have you done for me lately?"
5
Let's not forget then Senator Jeff Sessions role in promoting Miller and A.G. Sessions role in promulgating these severe policies.
4
I am struck by this article's powerful and precise use of Nuremberg-style terminology. Thank you for speaking boldly to history.
7
"Widespread rot requires legions of enablers ... "
Which includes the stupefying 40% of the American public who approve of the Trump regime, with all its evident rot on display day by day.
9
Stephen Miller showed his special brand of white nationalism early, when he was in high school running for student government. He was roundly booed by his classmates during a speech in which he urged them not to pick up their trash, as there were plenty of (Hispanic) janitors being paid to do it. He has never looked back.
I’d like to think that in normal times Mr. Miller would have wasted away in a dead end job, but these are not normal times and now this abject individual and his ilk have the ear of our equally racist and abject president. It is appalling and terrifying in equal measure!
7
Bravo! I only wish we were at the defending stage. This nightmare has gone on far too long due to their shameful dereliction of duty.
2
The most evil of all? Mitch McConnell who has made intelligent, partisan dialogue and compromise impossible by refusing to bring bills to the Senate floor. He needs to be investigated.
8
Ok, so what now? Editorials like this one are suffused with sanctimonious criticism of policy toward asylum seekers, but are bereft of proposals for establishing orderly procedures at the border. I mean is the entire population of Central America eligible for asylum? Anyway, what now?
14
@BD
No: the entire population of Central America is obviously not coming here. However, do you really think parents of young children would walk three thousand miles to come to the US for a free root canal or food stamps?
They are escaping countries where murderous gangs rule, Any human would do the same. They are not criminals, and they are doing nothing illegal. They are presenting themselves at the border.
Trump now wants to cut off aid to these countries which will result in further death and misery;
Not the way to establish " orderly " procedures.
5
Stephen Miller is a conundrum because of his heritage: he is the grandson who Jews escaped the pogroms of Russia to come to this country.
How can a man from such a tragic background ignore and twist plight of his fellow man?
5
@Fallon: I suspect that many descendants of Jews who fled Russian pogroms are enthusiastic backers of Benjamin Netanyahu. While "suffering brings wisdom" is a classic theme of Greek tragedy, suffering also can make people into reasonable facsimiles of their persecutors - brutal, racist, and ultra-nationalist.
1
@Fallon, because there are such people who exist...who having gone through tragedy wish to inflict it on others. Why else do humans keep making mistakes? Why haven't humans learned from history?
1
The Bible that so many Trumpers thump, apparently without even thumbing it, is pretty clear: "he that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith."
Anyone in this administration is now corrupt, whatever they were when they began; anyone who has applauded Trump's hatreds at a rally has been corroded.
9
Oh please. the issue is Trump not Miller, Miller
is only doing what Trump wants done. he wants
toadies who will brealk the law to what he wants
done
it's not gonna stop until you wise up
Aimee Mann
7
Yes, lots of monstrous behavior to go around here. Trump and his sycophants have taken monster to a whole new level in the American politic.
Are we living a real life version of the Manchurian Candidate?
In the meantime, Dems - who have no platform other than mouthing “comprehensive immigration reform” - have no platform here; and, immigration is going to be the issue Trump wishes to ride to a second term.
So, details folks…and yesterday.
4
What Trump, Miller ab-nd Nielsen have in common? Their ancestors (grand father in the case of Trump for exemple) are immigrants.
5
Mr. Miller's fixation on barring immigrants is a big part of the reason why those of us who can afford to buy it at all are paying $4 for a bunch of celery and the same for a head of lettuce these days.
3
please, don't buy their books.
4
All of this madness can stop on a dime if our "hero", that we know is out there, just sends Mueller's full unredacted report to Nadler and drops the tax returns off as well.... this country needs to breath again.... DJT will continue to lash out in highly destrutive ways until he has complete control over this country via DOJ
5
Lets be honest that the truth is worth it - expose this vile ideology of hate as a way to retain political power with the suffering of brown and black human beings.
15
Indeed Mr Miller cannot act alone. Ms Cottle has identified a list of players in this drama of America's dark moment but missed a quiet stage hand - Mitch McConnell. Or perhaps we can ask for contributions to a list of those in positions of power in this administration who remain "unfettered by concern for the law, international norms or basic humanity."
26
I'm not entirely convinced that futile attempts to enforce immigration law with insufficient resources can reasonably be characterized as "vicious immigration polic[y]."
4
@Lee M. Cardholder Then please, give your small children to the next uniformed man who orders you to, and plan to not see them for 2 years, if ever at all.
7
@Lee M. Cardholder, I wouldn't be either. Since that's not the case, what do you think about the actual topic? Taking children from their parents, with zero plan to identify who goes with who.
They have no plan because they don't care. Immigration policy with no care (mercy) is vicious when it makes the vulnerable suffer more instead of offering any comfort.
I'll bet you'll never be 'entirely convinced'. You'll always think trump is reasonable. But at least address the topic. How many mothers have to lose their children forever while folks like you sniff that they should have just stood up to the gangs if they love their kids.
So I guess you'll be even MORE confused if I add 'stupid' to 'vicious'.
For two years Republicans and a President who claims to be a Republican, have been in power. Suddenly, with the Democrats in power in the House, the Democrats are "the problem." What did Republican legislators do for those two years to install more judges, work on DACA, analyze the numbers, work with the Central American countries whose citizens were escaping violence? I submit - little to nothing. Now Trump points fingers and does his typical "got no plan, just reactions and bravado" so he can get re-elected, and Republicans support this rhetoric by doing nothing. No one stops McConnell from failing to bring proposed laws to the floor. Even now with "America is full comments" - the silence is deafening from Republicans. This is not just about Stephen Miller who has survived Trump's slash and burn of various advisors. He is just one of many sycophants.
28
The New York Times, much of the mainstream media, and many American politicians are responsible for the immigration mess. I am a passionate environmentalist and believe strongly in a zero population growth policy. This can only be achieved by restricting immigration, and yet much of the media and our politicians will not act to further this aim. Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller certainly have their problems, but why is there not strict enforcement of legislation criminalizing employers who hire illegal immigrants? Why do commenters not hold the parents morally culpable who bring small children to try to enter our country illegally? In fact, they are encouraged to place their children at risk by those who oppose any restrictions on immigration, who encourage criminal behavior by advocating for sanctuary cities and non enforcement of our laws.
8
@Wan Zero population growth requires worldwide birth control. Limiting immigration does nothing.
Right, people south of the border have no effect on the environment.
I have been a Nyt subscriber for a year now.
It's been great, but maybe I need to subscribe to something else.
The coverage and analysis of the GOP and Trump has been forensic and consistent, and I value it. ( Like this article)
But..... where is the analysis of Democrat border policy, and how they are standing up to to the current , (and ongoing) madness?
I really fear for your nation and the world in the coming year and post 2020.
Many Nyt readers will not want to read my proffered example from Australia:
Since 1996, NO federal election has been won here by a party perceived to be soft on border protection.
Be disgusted by the people in power as much as you want, but you need solutions, urgently.
11
@Guy
But Australia's immigration policies have produced hideous internment camps and grotesque abuse of the people confined there. Are you suggesting Australia provides a model to be followed or shunned?
3
"But there is much guilt to go around, and even reluctant collaborators cannot be allowed to absolve themselves of responsibility for the administration’s continuing outrages."
"Reluctant collaborators", Ms. Cottle? I see no reluctance on the part of ANY Republicans to allow Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller to do anything they wish to on the issue of immigration. Even those who remain silent in the face of this cruelty are complicit. The fact is that Republicans simply do not care. Whether they are cold-hearted hard-liners like Stephen Miller, calculating apparatchiks like Mitch McConnell, or sheep in sheep's clothing like Susan Collins, they are giving Mr. Trump a pass to be as vicious and inhumane as he wishes to be. Obviously they feel there is political capital to be made. It is up to us, the voters, to tell them they are wrong.
28
Stephen Miller's own ancestors immigrated to our USA one, two or three generations ago, I would guess. I would guess again -- dead wrongly -- that Miller would demonstrate a degree of compassion for today's immigrants from Central America and elsewhere who suffer desperation equal, at least, to that suffered by his ancestors.
12
I've never been a fan of the Clintons--though I held my nose and voted for HRC in 2016--but HRC was correct in her vituperation that Trump's supporters are a basket of deplorables, even though that comment helped her lose the election.
22
@james
To give her credit, she said that HALF of Trump's supporters are a basket of deplorables. She was being generous.
1
Ultimately, it is those that vote for trump and those that aid and abet his policies that are ultimately responsible, period.
12
All of this anti immigrant nonsense does nothing to address the real issues facing any politician in America, it's the loss of wealth generating manufacturing work throughout the country devastating the disappeared middle class.
When that's combined with shipping the intellectual white collar information work jobs overseas, what do we expect the reaction is going to be?
Outrage against wall street and corporate greed? Come on, whenever your stocks bump up, you applaud it, whether it's sound for you and your family or not.
As far as any kid like Stephen Miller is concerned, I'm more interested to know if reports of him eating dried glue off his arm in grade school are accurate. For me, that's all I need to know about the depth of thought going on there.
5
While not all conservatives lack empathy it is true that most people who lack empathy are conservatives.
21
Stephen Miller makes a great villain. As Mr. Trump is so fond of saying, "right out of central casting".
This column makes an important point: We can't allow the people who caved and enabled this absurdist, above-the-law president to assault the very foundations of what America represents. They must not be allowed to rehabilitate their reputations. They must be forever shackled to Trump, the man who's priorities they were willing to pursue to the detriment of our country.
9
Sadly the motto for the Trump Administration is ...
"Another day, another law broken."
While the author suggests Stephen Miller can't act alone, that presumes legal parameters and practical administrative processes will be respected. The Trump presidency is characterized by its atypical (and illegal) behaviors. Case in point, there are currently five "acting" appointees. These acting administrators have not been vetted by Congress so they're likely unqualified and may well conduct themselves poorly in the office they've been assigned.
For the remaining months Trump is in office, I shall repeatedly remind Republicans that the next Democratic president may well conduct themselves similarly. So when the GOP wants to protest bad behavior by a Democrat president, they'll simply be told to shut up since Republicans failed to protest Trump's illegitimate behaviors.
Trump's time in the White House is and has been an autocratic stain on democracy. That's his legacy.
9
The Republican enablers of the madness of The Donald are worse in many respects.
Fifth rate Stephen Miller may have connived to gain destructive power but Hope Hicks, a swimsuit model and PR person in her 20s with no experience or expertise, was accorded ridiculous power and so were the adult rich "kids" like Jared and Ivanka with their supreme arrogance and incompetence.
Playing with evil as they all have is one thing. Real people including tiny helpless immigrant children and those who need healthcare and family farmers and disaster victims have suffered.
But the entire GOP and those like Graham, Kellyanne Conway, Ryan and McConnell deliberately and knowingly chose to support evil for their own vanity, wealth, power and arrogance. Evangelicals threw out their Bibles, while former patriots embraced Putin's choice rather than national security or the Constitution.
Reassuringly people like former First Lady Barbara Bush no longer regarded herself as a Republican and did not vote for Trump.
May the better angels of our natures prevail.
16
Trump searches Miller types out, for they are the only ones who will abide his hatred of those who do not look like him. Trump needs the Miller's of the world to enable him to execute his power hungry thirst. Miller is of the dark side, but so is Trump and many of those around them. We indeed have a dark cloak of cruelty sitting in the Oval office just waiting to thrust more pain and misery at those seeking asylum. They do it with carefree abandon because they truly believe that their action will be a deterrent. How wrong can they be? Now let's separate more children from their parents, they say with glee.
6
“Widespread rot requires legions of enablers, many of whom are driven by varying blends of personal ambition…” True, and most of them can be found in Congress.
However, it only took a handful in powerful positions to cause enormous harm, such as Paul Ryan, Devin Nunes, and Mitch McConnell.
As for Stephen Miller, I picture him in a corner attic of the White House, hanging upside down from a rafter at night. Trump calls him when he needs him by projecting a full moon on the wall.
7
It’s depressing to acknowledge the truth of Ms. Cottle’s very astute observations. It seems that as a society we are destined to limp along with this enormous blind spot to the collective culpability of those “legions of enablers” who even as we speak plot and connive their uniquely special and oh so very individual contribution to the ever increasing “Widespread rot” led by the conquering genius who loudly and vigorously claimed that only he would “Drain the swamp”. Well pull the other one Donald!
Not only has the swamp not drained, it seems that the drain has become completely clogged and the swamp runneth over so much that we are all suffering from the toxic waste we ingest daily. We seem to not be able to help ourselves as we make excuses or mitigate these corrupt enablers as they one by one inevitably transition to the greener pastures of book launches or Fox News guest spots until again we forget that any of this even happened...
3
One key point the media and others often miss about Stephen Miller is that while his zeal is beyond doubt, he actually understands almost nothing about migration. The policies he and Trump espouse will do little if anything to advance their own stated goals. Smaller countries like Hungary that border prosperous European states have some realistic chance of bullying immigrants into leaving, and constructive physical and administrative barriers to prevent others arriving. Not so the USA.
Miller is evidently a skilled bureaucratic infighter, and plays the Iago role brilliantly, blessed by serving a truly dimwitted would-be king. However on his chosen policy area, he is just another incompetent hack, blinded by his own deep-seated prejudices. It is tragic that the Miller/Trump immigration policies will cause so much harm to so many lives. It is farcical that they will also certainly not succeed. Any true migration expert can see that.
6
From my point, it looks like Miller is a disaffected youth who finally found another unhappy person ie trump with whom he could wield power.
3
Stephen Miller is straight out of Central Casting.
1
If you think about it, Homeland Security is the perfect place for trump to manufacture his own palace guard. It has investigative and enforcement powers, a large contingent of heavily armed enforcers, a huge budget, a congressionally granted broad reach, it is alles about der Homeland, and it has that Orwellian Security vibe that any faux patriot will appreciate. This purge seems to be designed to install more "acting" department heads to avoid any more oversight.
Next up will be Miller strutting around trying on military style jackets and practicing clicking his heels together when he salutes the dear leader.
3
When Shakespeare wrote, “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”, he never envisioned Stephen Miller.
7
These draconian policies will worsen the immigration problem rather than solving it. Call me cynical, but I suspect that Miller knows that full well. (Trump might not, since his cognitive limitations have been obvious for years — all he cares about is the cheers from under the MAGA hats.) That's what this administration needs for the coming election season: a constant growing crisis at the southern border with which to whip up his base. The last thing they want is to settle the crisis.
6
I would like to know who Miller's friends are inside of the White House. Does anyone actually speak to him? All the pictures show him standing at the sidelines. I think that the reason Trump keeps him around is that he has always seen himself as "apart" from the crowd. The realtor who was not part of New York's Realtor elite. Miller is Trump's way of thumbing his nose at all the people who would not let him become one of their "crowd."
1
It seems to me, that people like Stephen Miller rise to the surface because we have a president who is woefully uninformed about much of anything and is interested in one thing: his base. Period.
That being said, illegal immigration is a very complex problem and the solution is multi-dimensional. By way of an analogy, you can't address cardiac disease in a patient without considering the other major systems in the human body. The same is true of illegal immigration. Trump and his minions are trying to solve it in a vacuum: "separate the families!", "cut off aid to Central American!". It won't work.
If the Democrats were smart, instead of pounding their fists on the table about how awful Trump's policies are, they would roll up their sleeves and put forth a comprehensive proposal themselves that addresses all aspects of the problem. Instead, we hear AOC screaming, "Abolish ICE!". She is doing the same thing Trump is doing- looking for a quick fix without considering the entirety of the system.
This issue needs to be addressed as one would address cardiac disease. Look at all aspects of the problem and craft laws and policies that take it all into account. Unfortunately, in the click bait, quick fix times in which we live, I don't see many people having the patience or stamina to take this on.
5
Miller cannot act alone, but rest assured, Trump and Miller will appoint people to work with Miller that possess the same level of vitriolic, bitter, angry, xenophobic hate Miller possesses for just about everyone.
I agree that “there is much guilt to go around”, but I have no problem seeing Stephen Miller “as the archvillain of the Trump administration’s immigration policies”. And much else besides. He is the ultimate yes-man to Trump. His television appearances show him to be boorish, conceited, and shameless — highly prized qualities in the current administration. When he grows up, he wants to be Steven Mnuchin.
4
Miller continues to wield power simply because all those Republicans who believe America should be an all-white anti-immigrant country are more than willing to hide behind him and Trump.
The only way I could have the slightest scintilla of regard for Nielsen is if she came out and confirmed directly what is going on and what horrible ideas Miller, Trump et al are concocting. But that's unlikely to happen and we've heard that defense of "just following orders" before.
2
So tired of this politically-motivated propaganda ad nauseam. Enough already! We’re a sovereign nation with defined borders and immigration laws. Our government’s obligation is to serve the best interests of the American citizenry. Period!
And that doesn’t include playing host, patron, and nursemaid to millions of foreign citizens who brazenly trespass across our porous borders to exploit our (diminishing) wealth...our schools, hospitals, labor market, welfare system, natural resources, and birthright citizenship laws....at a cost to American taxpayers in the $Billions, yea after year.
I’m thrilled that an elected official of ANY party is attempting to put a stop to this ongoing criminal racket. Finally...
3
@Shenoa Your comment is un-American. I suggest you visit the Statue of Liberty ASAP to familiarize yourself with American values.
3
I read that Stephen Miller is the grandson of immigrants who came over during the last big wave in the late 19th - 20th century. There was an article in Politico by his uncle. Here’s the money quote: “If my nephew’s ideas on immigration had been in force a century ago, our family would have been wiped out.”
6
"Widespread rot requires legions of enablers, many of whom are driven by varying blends of personal ambition, ideological expedience and the self-aggrandizing delusion that, through their invaluable counsel, they can save the state from total destruction."
Is it always that motive or could it be that the enablers really believe in the mission?
Whatever the rationale, this corrupt administration has been kept afloat by an even more corrupt Republican party.
That anyone would tolerate an obnoxious 33 year old and bestow on him the power to actually drive policies that in a normal United States would be unheard--and which all are patently illegal-- of takes a village as Ms. Cottle says.
When even Chuck Grassley, another wily operator who contributes to Republican rot, complains about Stephen Miller, Trump better take notice.
9
"immigrant-bashing, ethnonationalist platform". That statement about DJT's rise to power should be alarming to everyone, but apparently it's not. You are right, DJT, Stephen Miller, and the rest of the white nationalists now running our country, cannot do it alone. The Republicans, especially in Congress, are complicit, as is anyone that blindly and enthusiastically supports any of these disgusting policies. Having the President say that "we should get rid of judges" is one of the most abhorrent statements he's made to date. We've all seen this play out before in Germany, Italy, China, Cambodia, Rwanda, and dozens of other countries throughout history. This group's actions are not protecting America, they're putting everything that we have stood for at risk. We cannot let them be successful. Vote every one of them out of office.
6
Steven Miller is only the Drum Major. It’s the band itself, supporting his xenophobia, that is allowing him to prevail. We are paying the price as a country, for voters who wanted to believe, but didn’t do their homework. This national ugliness is the result. As an American, I cannot give up hope. I must believe the Steven Millers of the world are an anomaly, that he is not what we are destined to become. We must reject Steven Miller, and all he represents.
3
The way to dispose of Miller is to give Miller all the credit. Same way we got rid of Bannon. President Miller took charge when Trump was unable to get his wall built and helped Trump see he had to declare an emergency.. And when Trump made a mess of separating children from parents at the border and had to back off Miller got Trump to clean house of the people who weren't aggressive enough .....
3
The horrid Stephen Miller at odds with the dreadful Neilsen all under the grotesque wing of the execrable Trump.
A fine time is this. We are all so blessed.
1
The average Democrat corresponding in this comment column STILL can't understand what got Donald Trump elected to the White House.
Average Americans saw their country leaving what made our country great behind as socialist tinkerers played with ignoring the constitution, the separation of powers, and even the integrity of the vote.
Our federal government became Iran's financial partner while it ignored Israel and our old partners from WWII.
We saw BOTH political parties wanting illegal aliens all over the country while expensive prisons filled with thousands of criminal aliens.
We saw the D.C. culture of BOTH parties becoming an enemy of what we wanted - and our voice was ignored.
But this one guy, like the author William F. Buckley Jr., stood up and basically said, ''Not here. Not in MY county.''
And people who mostly wanted OTHER candidates at first ended up behind this amazing American President. He champions the workers and they champion him.
1
Anyone who willing takes a job to advise trump is complicit in his evil. And I’m not talking about career government workers who are hopelessly stuck in a career that used to be noble.
miller is just one cruel person who has risen as a yes man. How and why he became such a hateful person, will really never be known.
But, how clever, make him more interesting and important than the president, allude that he’s really the shadow president; the brains of the operation and trump is just taking orders from a 33 year old. Suggest he’s overtaking jared and d jr. as the favorite son.
And, well, we know how much trump just loves throwing people under the bus.
4
The bottom line is that the GOP has to push a 1% agenda by getting voters hurt by that agenda to consistently vote for ir.
They cheat by gerrymandring and disenfranchising. They rely on Fox lies and propaganda. They spend millions in untraceable dark money. Most damaging of all, is that they are willing to use fear and anger to divide our nation.
Since Nixon encouraged hardhats to go after hippies, the GOP playbook has been clear since civil rights was a Democratic Party legacy. Make white voters very afraid and resentful.
Social and economic damage is acceptable in order to divide our nation's wealth so unevenly.
Why should we expect immigrants to be treated humanely after how the GOP has treated its own citizens? Cynicism can't even begin to explain their contempt for people who are not them.
The wonder of it all has been why the Dems are so inept at pointing this out to long suffering US workers and the dwindling middle class.
3
Ms. Cottle, what do you mean by "ethno-nationalist"? Surely, you mean "nationalist." American has never been defined as ethnicity, unless you have evidence to the contrary.
2
@Russell Zanca Ethno-nationalist is another way of saying white supremacist. And, yes, for them America is (or should be) defined as an ethnicity. Only then, in their sick minds, will America be "great" again.
1
Brilliantly scary piece, Michelle Cottle. Stephen Miller is Trump's very young sinister immigration hawk, whose ideas are against human rights and the moral values of American democracy. He came up with the demented idea of "Binary Choice" for families migrating to the United States -- a real "Sophie's Choice" -- leave my immigrant child in U.S. detention indefinitely or turn around and go back to failed C.A. country. "America is full!" said Trump.
Stephen Miller, the guy who put the "great big beautiful wall" burr under Trump's saddle, is still driving him toward a 2nd term as our 45th President. Driving Trump is the job of his cadre of conservative nationalists and won't save America from further chaos and destruction. Trump's enablers (you know who) are running afoul of the law. Like Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump's "weak" Secretary of DHS, so many other of Trump's folks have gone with the wind, resigned, fired by Tweet, etc. Stephen Miller and his people are collaborators and complicit. So what, beyond voting Trump out of office next year, can we do about it today?
3
Harry Truman's famous quip, now a political platitude, summarizes his thoughts of presidential power: "The buck stops here." Whatever Nielsen did (caging children) or didn't do (refuse to cage children), the fault lies with Donald Trump. The buck stops with him.
Trump is responsible for Nielsen's caging the children. Worse, he's responsible for separating children from their parents. This is kidnapping, and kidnapping is a federal crime.
Whether Steven Miller or Donald Trump or Kirstjen Nielsen suggested the separation of children of asylum seekers, it's Donald Trump who is responsible for this kidnapping. For committing a federal crime of this magnitude, Trump is guilty. As a kidnapper of thousands of children, Trump should be impeached. Hear this, Nancy Pelosi?
4
Can't help thinking that there is this incredible resemblance between Mr. Miller and the sinister child catcher in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, played by Sir Robert Helpmann. We all know how it ended for this villain.
But, he also had an enabler just like Mr. Miller and consorts have today. Unfortunately, in the real world, the consequences of this administration's actions are so much more evil and devastating.
2
After the border wall went up with barbwire in the city of Nogales AZ, the largest port in the SW, and Trump threatened to close the border, the Mayor of Nogales asked the question all Americans should be asking – is the Trump administration locking illegal immigrants out or locking Americans in? Mexico is one of our largest and strongest trading partners, a vacation destination, and the country of origin for many American citizens yet the Trump administration is treating any Americans who engages with our neighbors of Mexico should be afraid and treat with distrust. Just who is the target of the Trump administrations’ policies? It is beginning to look more and more like Americans are the targets and we are collaborating willingly.
5
Bottom line, Stephen Miller is a man whose anti-immigration zeal remains unfettered by concern for the law, international norms or basic humanity.
So, why does he and Ann Coulter, etc, have such anti-immigration views? Where there any personal experiences that forged their opinions? Or was it from their upbringing? What doctrine, text did they read and latch onto?
1
Stephen Miller is just issuing orders. Collaborators are just following orders.
As long as you can convince yourself that there’s no choice, sleep should come easily.
5
We are all complicit in the loss of our democracy. We all should be in the streets right now, protesting, disrupting, maybe even rebelling. But we wake up and go to work every day thinking that someone or something will save us, that sanity will return, and all will be normal again. It won't. We're done.
37
@617to416 Millions of Americans have taken to the streets numerous times, from the moment this skid mark was "elected." If "we're done" it's the result of far more complex and long-term elements than rolling apathy. An "angry" overly-entitled minority longing for the days when they had second-class citizens they could slap for insubordination, turn dogs and water hoses on for demanding equal treatment under the law; a mythological origin story of "self-made" America (without those enslaved workers, that stolen native land and big government giveaways and protections); those are just two of the most egregious, ingrained elements. If "we're done" it's been a long time coming, and millions of Americans long dead who were crushed under its "self-made" dream aren't all that surprised.
12
Like ordinary Germans in the 1930's we are all complicit. We did nothing when our legislators failed to write and implement wise immigration policy between 2008 and 2013. We stood by while candidate Trump demonized the immigrants who live here in the shadows and too many of us didn't cast a ballot in 2016. We can object loudly, but can only change the course of our nation at the 2020 polling stations.
48
@Maureen Maybe, but I and many of my friends and family voted, spoke out, gave money to immigration positive organizations and it hasn't worked very well. Now they say we are harpies and making Trump look good. The Germans that opposed Hitler and his policies mostly ended up dead. There is a price, I know, for trying to do the right thing. But it doesn't always work out.,
2
Exactly. One person can dream up these horrific policies, but it takes a village to enact and carry them out. Not one republican is innocent in any of this.
29
Miller is not acting in a vacuum, that is certain, and he is expressing the values of DJT. DJT needs to find people to devalue and exploit in his own efforts to keep his ratings up. It is worthwhile to remember that DJT's presidency is all about maintaining him as the center of attention and the easiest way to capture attention is via negative behavior. It is a lot easier to be obstructionist and destructive than constructive. To borrow from DJT, Stephen Miller is right out of central casting if you are looking for a Goebbels or Roy Cohn type.
Our political process has become incapable of providing any check on presidential power. The Senate and House have become weakened to the point that they are just curtains and chorus to the main player on the stage. Republican senators and congressman walk around and shrug their shoulders waiting for the next astounding monologue and the Democrats scream background noise without focus or power.
29
@Zinkler
Excellent and insightful comment. But I think you are giving DJT too much credit when you say that Stephen Miller "is expressing the values of DJT". I don't believe that DJT is able to form, much less maintain, coherent values. It is the other way around: DJT is expressing the values of Stephen Miller.
6
@BigEd I agree that Trump lacks many "core" values. But it appears to me that he does have (and share with Miller) the "core value" of racism. He's made this apparent since the days he (and daddy) refused to rent apartments to black people in the 70's, right through to calling for the execution of the Central Park Five and his ride down the golden elevator complaining about "Mexican rapists."
@Zinkler Thanks. Good analysis.
There are only 394 immigration judges in the U.S. The first and most obvious solution to the crisis on the border would be to employ thousands of additional immigration judges. Since this is not possible in the short term, the existing cadre of immigration judges should be required to supervise hundreds of cases at a time. Thousands of lawyers and paralegals should be hired to function at the direction of the judges to develop a case record and recommendation for the judge to act expeditiously. The Administration has to implement this change quickly, and not let the American Bar Association get away with attempts to stifle an expeditors implementation of the program. As a juror, I have seen how some cases that could be settled in an hour take weeks to resolve. Our legal system is broken. You cannot blame that on Miller.
10
@Robert Pryor in this sad and corrupt administration, yes we can believe someone this young and inexperienced and wrong can enact a policy so vile, yes we can.
Years ago I visited a doctor living outside of Elmira, in southern New York State. He and his friends were interested in timber rattlers. They watched them, caught them. One reported having wrapped a small rattlesnake around his arm (this did not end well). The doctor set up rocky nests to attract local vipers on his spacious hillside property, which faced south, so the rocks were warm.
I walked with him. We saw big snakes and little ones. Discovery: timber rattlers naturally blend in with fallen rotting leaves, so a neophyte won’t see even the big ones ... lying motionless just a few feet away.
Stephen Miller has the gaze of a rattlesnake.
I now offer apologies to all actual vipers.
38
@Deborah
Thank you for the eloquent, fable-like analysis about Stephen Miller. Both he and Jared Kushner frighten me. They have the same dead-eyed stare belying the evil machinations going on in their narrow, force-fed brains. Both these men are in their 30s and have narrow, selfish ideologies and limited experience in the realities of their own country, let alone the wider world. They believe in themselves and devour power way too much for coddled
millennials. Every despot in history has always had a few of these sneering, calculating types lurking in the background pulling the strings. They might wait a while but always pounce and strike and devastation results.
6
American democracy is in decline, and there is nothing the people can do about it. Nothing has ever stopped the decline of a civilization. We are no different. The reasons for the decline are no different. Check it out.
20
have you ever crossed the border toward Mexico without documents? It won't end with a flower and a hug.
For legal immigrants, all is well.
for those breaking the law, and not pausing to apply for a visa (or asylum), our systems are overwhelmed.
Currently, all of our friends in Asia, Africa and Europe must apply for visa (or asylum), they can't just walk over the border.
We need a same immigration system and policies. accepting folks who are Randomly walking over a border is not a policy; its a lack of policy.
6
Well, if this administration hadn't closed the Guatemalan, Honduran, and El Salvadoran offices that processed asylum cases in early 2017, the people wouldn't have to take the arduous journey to apply for asylum at the border. Which, by the way, is a universally recognized human right and therefore legal.
27
@Joe Yoh
We have these policies in place and aplying for asylum is legal. We are all immigrants--keep that in mind. Some of these migrants are more American than you or me; they are indigenous.
10
This brilliantly succinct and extremely compelling article should be required reading for anyone and everyone
passionately determined to reclaim our democracy and the moral principles upon which it was founded from those whose relentless
mission is to divide and destroy every last vestige of American decency.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps a few of the ones
describing the subjects shown here could be captioned, "WANTED. For Crimes Against Humanity."
Vote.
60
Whenever I see Stephen Miller--a 33-year-old--peering into a TV camera with a cold stare, I get chills. Correct that he does not operate in a vacuum, but how has he survived when so many others have been sent packing in this chaotic White House? How does a person who's so young, so inexperienced, wield such power? "...[He's] never met an immigrant he doesn't want to deport" is about right. He forgets, however, that he wouldn't be here if he didn't come from a line of immigrants
As for the charge that Democrats strive for open borders--no, Democrats aim for comprehensive immigration reform, which almost happened in 2014, but it met with Republican resistance because, oh, they didn't like the guy who was in the White House, and they wanted to block everything he tried to get through. Part of the package was the so-called DREAM act. Some of those same people conveniently forgot that President Reagan granted complete amnesty to millions when he was president; he's their patron saint, after all. Meanwhile, Trump has reduced the number of entry points for asylum, reduced the number of judges who can hear cases, thereby increasing backlogs, screaming "WE'RE FULL!" and accusing Democrats of being responsible.
Why we can't work together for comprehensive immigration reform lies at the feet of this obstructionist administration. I see Stephen Miller's face smirking back at me. He may not be alone, but he's a presence.
82
Why can’t we work together?? If you solve the problem (ie. govern) What will the president run his campaign on? Better to have the red meat to throw to the base than resolve an issue troubling our country.
1
@Zander1948 Not only do they scream "WE'RE FULL" they scream, see it is an emergency. Stephen Miller is too cleaver by far, he thinks his approach works. So far all we have is chaos and suffering people at the boarder.
"Bottom line, Stephen Miller is a man whose anti-immigration zeal remains unfettered by concern for the law, international norms or basic humanity."
What an incredible distortion of the truth. Miller is anti-illegal immigration. It is the Dems who have absolutely no concern for the law (see sanctuary cities). And the left has no concern about international norms or basic humanity. Their only concern is changing the demographics of the electorate so they can seize power and keep it.
17
@Robert ... says the party of gerrymander and voter suppression, so that their minority party can ensure perpetual over-representation. They have seized power and intend to keep it.
139
Robert: Sanctuary cities only means that local law enforcement does not assist (because it is not required to) ICE in going after undocumented immigrants, which is a federal responsibility, paid for by federal taxes. Local law enforcement is paid for by local taxes. It’s perfectly legal. It’s Trump who flouts international norms and doesn’t care about basic humanity, and the Republicans who care so much about the electorate that they want to keep it lilywhite. Take a good look in the mirror. You accuse Democrats of what Republicans do!
114
@Robert Miller has also put forward plans that would reduce levels of legal immigration. For example, cutbacks in family reunification programs (which, ironically, is how Melania's parents got to the USA).
The dude flat out doesn't like immigrants.
44
Trump seemed to love immigrants, both documented and undocumented, when they were working for cheap at Mar-a-Lago. But now he says “the country is full” because this is what his white, rural, undereducated base demands.
And the author is right about Stephen Miller. He is Trump’s Frankenstein. Trump gave him whatever power he possesses because Miller’s policies please Trump’s base. Another irony is that Miller has survived and thrived in Trump’s White House, while his former boss, Jeff Sessions, perhaps Trump’s earliest prominent backer, fell out of favor and was fired.
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@Jack Sonville "Trump gave him whatever power he possesses because Miller’s policies please Trump’s base."
I guess elections DO have consequences.
18
Absolutely.
An intelligent and sensible administration would understand that it is in our national interest to work with neighboring countries in order to help these countries deal effectively with some of issues that result in people finding themselves in desperate need of asylum. The cost in monetary and in human terms? It's akin to the cost of prevention vs. the cost of cure.
Even if Trump were smart enough to understand any of this, he wouldn't care because demonizing folk who are trying desperately to improve their lives is an important campaign strategy for him.
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@Bill B
We have been thowing money at Central America since World War Two. Youcan see what it has produced for us.
However, if you think this issue will oust Donald Trump, Victor David Hanson has compiled an update on how this effort is going so far.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/07/all-the-progressive-plotters/
@Bill B why is it the responsibility of the United States to be tbe open borders dumping ground for the flotsam and jetsam of the world?
Answer : It is not.
Legal, measured and carefully chosen immigrants should be our goal not just masses of potential Democrat voters.
All of these so called asylum seekers will end up competing for jobs against working class citizens. This is the best way to destroy the gains made by blue collar workers during the Trump administration - their wages have increased at a higher percentage than whiter collar workers. Massive influxes of unskilled, uneducated workers hurt the poor and transfere money to the rich.
Additionally, the first order of business once in the U.S. is to have an anchor baby placing a greater burden on our system and allowing the new "citizen" to be eligible for welfare.
All advanced economies are going to need fewer unskilled humans in the future as automation and A.I. reduce the need for low skill jobs. That work needs to be reserved for citizens - not the billions that live in undesirable countries trying to gain access to the U.S. through questionable asylum claims.
18
@M.R. Sullivan
First let me address the falling birth rate. That is a good thing. The only way to save the biosphere is to lower the population of humans - especially in the advanced economies that cause most of the pollution and habitat destruction - even in places were there are no humans.
Secondly, there are some jobs that citizens will not do which is some agricultural work. That can be fixed by streamlining the H-2A visa program. Now, nursing homes are in medium and large cities and citizens will do ANY job there if the wage is high enough. If you want to pay third world wages, then citizens will not do it. Unskilled immigrants, legal and illegal, fill the ranks of the lowest pay workers keeping wages low, working conditions bad, and transferring wealth to the rich. My step-father had paid nursing help in his final years and none of them were immigrants.
13
@M.R. Sullivan
Saying or intimating that somehow care for the elderly is incumbent on the importation of legions of unskilled immigrants is just sophistry and without proof or merit.
It is a wages thing principally and not based on the lack of Americans willing to work. Get the wages up and Americans will stand in line I suspect.
16
Yet parts of the country that take in more immigrants (legal and illegal) are more prosperous than the parts that don’t, further contributing to resentments between the different parts of the country. How did that happen?
12
This and other stories involving the Trump administration bring to mind the question "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
In my version the question is "If Trump or any of his many enablers in the White House and elsewhere break laws, and there is no unbiased judiciary left to try their cases, does anyone go to prison?"
63
@Litote The rich and famous very rarely go to prison, they never lived by the same set of rules and laws as the common man
@Litote
from retired attorney F/70
Mitch McConnell is our nation's Number One most dangerous puppeteer right now.
He is slamming thru Senate approval layers of lifetime appointments across the federal judiciary to tilt immutably our judiciary's ability to provide essential checks and limits on Congress and The Executive Branch. For our kids and their kids for generations. Exalting unabashed partisans who will set in stone case law tied to twisted interpretations of our constitution. Think Citizens United that greased the way for the 0,1% to buy their preferred legislators and laws?
Mitch rejoices in the man in The White House's pulsing public excoriation of judges and courts to provide cover for his infinitely more dangerous acts. At lightning speed, he is showing his and his cabal's "arrogance and cruelty of power" in derogation of all notions of reason or justice . . .setting in stone "sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust."
Read all of SCOTUS Chief Justice Jackson's 21 November 1945 Opening Statement before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg for war crimes trials. Then Albright's Facism. Recognize all of that arrogance and cruelty among us today?
3
Prison? More like they get promoted.
A regretfully large percentage of children the world over are neglected, abused, or abandoned by one of their parents. U.S. immigration law entitles such children to asylum even if the child’s other parent is a perfectly good parent, or if the child is about to turn 18.
Central Americans have been asking for asylum under this law. Their cases are assigned to county juvenile court judges, with no particular knowledge of immigration or the country where the child is from. The judge does not even know if the child is really under age 18.
In trying to determine if an American child has been neglected, abused, or abandoned, a juvenile court judge will learn about the child and his family by interviewing them and reading medical, school and social service reports. The judge has no information on a Central American “minor” other than what the latter says, yet he has to decide whether to make him a ward of the court. If he errs on the side of caution by making him a ward, the Immigration service typically grants the “minor" asylum.
Even if what the "minor" says is true, why does the U.S. have to accept him instead of asking his own country’s social service agencies to help him? We have been accepting tens of thousands of young adults with scant education. These young people have been starting families, with no way of making a living. Congress needs to change this law.
11
@ann What social services are there in Guatemala and Venezuela?
You claim that judges does not have knowledge of immigration or the country where the child is from; but you do?
Fear and propaganda are powerful tools, and those who are weak and afraid tend to fall to the propaganda, and then themselves being used in the propaganda machinery, just look at the things you wrote!!! When you step out of the culture, you see the culture for what it truly is.
Ms. Cottle is absolutely right.
If fascism is a blend of 1. violence against people who cannot defend themselves and are blamed - in unhinged rants - for society's ills, 2. violence against dissidents, and 3. making the oligarchs richer, then we learned from the history of fascist regimes that those at the top always had numerous henchmen to carry out their agenda.
Opportunism of the henchmen made the atrocities happen.
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@Concerned Citizen "Opportunism of the henchmen made the atrocities happen."
So for heaven's sake, why are you and Ms. Cottle setting women and children up for the slaughter? Don't you see, they are people not political pawns! Why encourage these journeys? The Court will send them back, and the roundup for those who overstay their hearings will not be pretty nor particularly Christian.
@Concerned Citizen: Suggest you learn distinction between authoritarianism and fascism , best defined in my view by Edward Tannenbaum, former professor at NYU whose oeuvre includes well written works on the birthplace of fascism, Italy, as well as on Maurras's Action Francaise! ET defined fascism succinctly as "anti modernity!"I view Trump as America's De Gaulle, who saved his nation 5 times, first as head of Forces Francaises Libres(FFL) and then later, beginning in late 1950's settled the Algerian problem, "une bonne fois pour toutes,"by granting independence to the FLN IN RETURN for rights to petrol reserves in Sidi Messaoud and then granting a "grace amnistisante"to his worst enemies, those who numerous times attempted to assassinate him :the gunmen of the OAS. Trump defends the citizenry, "surtout et avant tout! C'est deja pas mal!"
1
If fascism is blaming others for society’s ills in unhinges rants then exhibit #1 is the comment section associated with this Opinion piece. I’ve never seen so much vitriol.
1
Border crossings in March 2019 hit a 12 year high.
This article, while rightfully being critical of Trump, Nielsen and Miller, does not offer any alternative policies that might stem or deal with this increase in people wanting to enter the country illegally.
21
@Mike Edwards
As I understand, most of the immigrants are not coming illegally, but are applying for asylum within the existing legal structures.
60
@Nina Rook
The prevailing worry is twofold:
1) That traffickers, after accepting migrants payments, have counseled migrants to ask for asylum if apprehended, since only by asking for asylum can migrants hope to stay.
2) The spirit of asylum law is being flouted. The harms to which migrants are subject in Central America do not constitute persecution based on inherent qualities.
14
Does anyone else long for a sane, stabile, calm, intelligent president who wants to live and act within the laws of the US constitution? Who tries to find the best path by consulting with most experienced people, who is not interested in putting on a show, but wants to work for the whole country and do his or her best to bring people together to solve the difficult problems of this time? Think about how far we have traveled down a very different road. Can we get back on track or not? This may be a defining moment that makes all the difference.
58
Send Stephen Miller to the border 24-7, and he can implement the policies that he thinks of behind the scenes, then see how the people respond to him. He doesn't have the courage to do so, where the rubber meets the road.
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@MaryKayKlassen
Im waiting for this administration to just give up the ghost and just start firing on the people at the border and finding a way to poison those in detention. Republican members of Congress wouldnt stop it, so why not.
The u.s. is a shadow of its former self.
1
@MaryKayKlassen, thank you for saying this. People should also know that just because we are calling Stephen Miller out, we are not anti semitic. Just last month, Rep Omar dared to speak about AIPAC and Israel and benjamins and everyone pounced on her singling her out as a Muslim woman who was perceived as anti semitic. Michelle Cottle is a member of the editorial board and is unlikely anti semitic, but yes she is talking about Stephen Miller who is a descendant of Jews who fled Eastern Europe but were somehow able to assimilate in America, perhaps spared facing immigrant backlash by the then residents of America?
1
@MaryKayKlassen It's too bad the "refugees" don't have the courage to take back their own countries. They have given up and capitulated.
Miller worked for Jeff Sessions before leaching onto Trump. I think the key difference between Miller and other Trump ‘enablers’ —and perhaps even between Miller and Trump himself— is that Miller fervently believes in a brutal, heartless policy. Trump is so devoid of policy chops and critical thinking that he could switch ideologies on a dime if someone persuaded him that positive political ramifications with his “base” would result.
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@David Ms.Michelle Cottle article is perhaps the best I have seen written in the NYTimes in a very, very, long time. I just wonder if Mr. Miller's parents or grandparents were Native Americans. Congress please let us know the Mueller report, so we can learn one or two things about the President and perhaps see if we have to put up with him for the next 2 years.
3
It’s not just the politicians
Where are the guards, the administrators, the ICE agents resigning in protest over the inhuman policy of separating children from their families?
You never hear about them because they don’t exist.
Apparently the entire “homeland security” apparatus is ok with this. So is 40 plus percent of America.
It’s not even a few bad apples. Almost half the barrel is rotten.
108
@Victor Lazaron Where are the competent and uncorrupt leaders of 100% of Central America?
@Gerald Hirsch Same place as those in the US
It just so happens that it was six years ago yesterday that The Iron Lady, Margareth Thatcher, passed away. Some of the scenes that I saw on television and online relative to that occasion made me question the decency of humanity: there were actually people rejoicing, even singing a particular song from The Wizard of Oz which I will not mention here, lest my post will not pass the censors of the NYT. It was beyond me how people could be so cruel, inhumane, and disrespectful, not only to the deceased--after all, she wasn't able to witness it I have to presume--but, more important, to the surviving relatives of the deceased. It took the arrival of the young upstart Stephen Miller for the lightbulb to go off in my head and to understand the visceral reactions that the behavior and actions of one individual can trigger into others.
22
I agree with this mostly because Miller's ideas are so banal.
There is nothing aside from their extremism and the power that entails, that makes them somehow attractive. To a phony wanna-be Emperor weakling, the urge is irresistible.
31
The stench emanating from all of Trump’s subordinates is overpowering. That stench will grow exponentially until we will either succumb to the foul and unbreathable air or at some point take up our courage and fight until they have been totally eradicated from office. Stephen Miller exudes a whiff of the grim reaper ‘round every corner…
64
I'm wondering if Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are both sociopaths. The lack of empathy and compassion, the manipulative behavior and pathological lying, the paranoia, the lack of remorse, shame or guilt for what they are doing, the lack of ability to work with a team to form a consensus, the lack of any concern for the weak and vulnerable populations amongst us, the seeming pleasure they get from firing people - it all points to sociopathy.
75
@Rain, you might be onto something.
Stephen Miller is a descendant of Eastern Europe Jews.
NIH study:
"Epigenetic transmission of Holocaust trauma: can nightmares be inherited?
Kellermann NP1.
The Holocaust left its visible and invisible marks not only on the survivors, but also on their children. Instead of numbers tattooed on their forearms, however, they may have been marked epigenetically with a chemical coating upon their chromosomes, which would represent a kind of biological memory of what the parents experienced. as a result, some suffer from a general vulnerability to stress while others are more resilient. Previous research assumed that such transmission was caused by environmental factors, such as the parents' childrearing behavior. New research, however, indicates that these transgenerational effects may have been also (epi) genetically transmitted to their children. Integrating both hereditary and environmental factors, epigenetics adds a new and more comprehensive psychobiological dimension to the explanation of transgenerational transmission of trauma. Specifically, epigenetics may explain why latent transmission becomes manifest under stress. a general theoretical overview of epigenetics and its relevance to research on trauma transmission is presented."
4
Trump and Stephen Miller are two peas in a pod!
1
@petey tonei: Epigenetic transmission of PTSD has never been proven to my knowledge, and is controversial to say the least. Anyway, it's quite unlikely that having Holocaust survivor ancestors would make Miller a sociopath. Just look at Trump to see the origins of (his) sociopathy: no PTSD, just venality and narcissism. Ugh.
There needs to be momentum in congress to impeach these villainous xenophobic bigots. Our leaders need to start standing up, shouting, pointing fingers, and, most important, using their legal levers of power to put an end to this deplorable Trump regime. Domestic regime change, top to bottom -- 2020 can't come soon enough.
40
@PE Trump is doing an end-run around Congress by appointing 'acting' heads of critical departments. There is no vetting, no confirmation hearing and no accountability. All power accrues to djt, which is how he ultimately envisions his presidency. I fear that 2020 may not change this. I sincerely hope I'm wrong!
18
@PE We would have to start with impeaching Mitch McConnell!
exactly on point. thank you.
13
There is plenty of guilt to go around but most of it needs to go to the right wing outage machine a la Fox, Limbaugh and Coulter for normalizing poisonous discourse in our society. Germany didn't wake up one day and start throwing Jews in the oven because somebody spray painted "kill all Jews" on the side of a building, they did it after years of dehumanizing rhetoric from demagogues, politicians, charlatans and narcissists. This is a well written editorial, not sensationalistic or over emotional but it's about time the word "evil" was used to describe what is going on in our country and the world at large.
131
I remember when people around the world saw America as a beacon of hope, a city on a hill. Now it seems that an overwhelming darkness of cruelty, lies and racism has invaded this White House. Sad!
52
With Trump and Steve Miller America is a haunted house on a hill!
1
@Ray G. I was one of them. Thank god Canada accepted me.
Obama's child separation policy was directed at "unaccompanied minors"--children who were without their parents. The reasoning behind this policy was to protect these minors from human trafficking, prostitution, drug smuggling and gang exploitation. Obama was protecting these minors. Miller's policies are the separation of minors from their parents who are seeking refuge in America. Trump's base who post false statements are truly despicable.
162
If being disgusted with Stephen Miller makes me anti-Semitic, I must be that. I can not understand what person would support a lying, bragging racist even if it means he or she gains a position of influence according to social media, the press, or Fox news. But Miller is just a start. Tomorrow the capetbagger Trump will come to Texas and join with a group of scalliwags who would claim to be Texans and grovel at his feet. Watch the photos, read the legends, remember the names, and wait for the opportunity to prove that your vote can cleanse this government of the slime left by Stephen Millers of every type. This government will work when it can combat a Russian cyber attack, ignore the behavioral communications constructed by Rupert Murdock, and count the vote you make. Now you know what can happen if you think the process is a joke.
35
Ray, I can tell you first hand that Miller is reviled by the Jewish community. He is hated by most of the members of his own synagogue in Santa Monica. He did not learn one thing about Judaism and Jewish values and is the opposite of Tikkun Ilum (to repair the world). I myself am quite upset that a fellow Jew would think and act in such a vile manner.
@Ray: His own family is disgusted with him. It's not anti-Semitic.
@Ray: It's now Wednesday and the Attorney General (his personal Roy Cohn) says he's looking into the 'spying' of the Trump campaign. Also, Trump is saying he wants to get rid of the Office of Personnel Mgmt. And that he alone is running Homeland Security.
Now all that just makes my day. Unfortunately, every day is like this.
When are the R's going to wake up? I've never seen a more anti-American group of 'Americans'. These people are supposed to protect us. What a joke. Until the next catastrophe.
1
Mr.Miller's ancestors were immigrants - from where, when, why?
20
@turbot
I understand that the family were from Eastern Europe, perhaps Russia since they were fleeing the Czar's pogroms. Late 1890s, early 1900s.
@turbot: His grandmother arrived in 1906. The family were escaping from anti-Jewish pogroms in Belarus, Russia which left 2,000 dead and many more wounded. These pogroms were organised by the Russian authorities and caused the mass emigration of Jews from Russia.
Turn the nationalities and circumstances around and it sounds familiar?
How soon we forget where we are from, who we are and who we were...Maybe evil has no memory, but you can name those who practice it.
1
@turbot They're from what is now Belarus in 1903, and those on his mother's side were Jews. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351
The "village" is the entire republican party.
39
Democrats need to get this guy in front of a camera as much as possible.
I don't think Hollywood could cast a more unlikeable troll.
98
How many times have we seen this: A person who is so sure of himself, so full of hubris, delirious with power, falling back to Earth with a resounding thud, that is only surprising to him.
He never sees it coming. That is Stephen Miller. He thinks the Universe anointed him to rule over the minions. He will find out the Universe mocks him.
60
@judge a la Ben Rhodes
He needs to be exposed more than he is now. He should be seen for the Sociopath that he is. Considering that his position is not born of experience, but from alt-right hatred, he cannot be allowed to continue to influence policy.
78
On my desk is a photo of my father, a Captain in the Air Corp who flew bombers over Berlin during WWII. Only one out of three planes survived the trip. He survived and was on the ground during the freeing of Auschwitz as well.
With all of his material success, he was forever damaged by the cruelty, the inhumanity of it all, and so were we. But it made me clear eyed. The despicable nature of this administration is capable of anything; and “we the people” better realize it.
150
Nielsen deserves all the condemning she has and will, continue to receive for not having the courage or decency to have told her boss "no". She is just one of the many servile, conscienceless amoral sycophants doing trump's bidding.
But who is the source of and the architect of this evil? Miller or trump? Does it matter? If what either of them proposes is allowed to go forward unchallenged, what next atrocity are we willing to tolerate? Actual murder?
These monsters do not recognize bounds, limits, laws, the inhumanity of what they've done. They do not care. Apparently neither does a supine SCOTUS or a half hobbled Congress.
That slippery slope we talk about? We're there, and no amount of equivocating or rationalizing or explaining and wishing otherwise is going to change that. We either do something about it or when they decide to put some of us in cages, who is going to stop them.
50
"Widespread rot requires legions of enablers, many of whom are driven by varying blends of personal ambition, ideological expedience and the self-aggrandizing delusion"
...you forgot one of the most important factors of cruelty: cowardice. Compassion and sensitivity are not weak traits but actually require strength. Morrissey sings in "I know it's over":
"It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes guts to be gentle and kind".
so true. A White House and half a Congress full of fearful people. Sad.
24
What's almost too painful to contemplate is that even the Ice Queen wasn't coldblooded enough to satisfy the power mad fearmonger in the Oval Office and his most ruthless enabler. That being the case, how much worse can it get?
And from underneath them in the dutiful command structure, as if echoing from the darkest recesses of the 20th century, will invariably come a chilling chorus of "Just Following Orders." Ever louder, no doubt, just like a chant from a MAGA rally.
As the Trump administration's countless abominations and humanitarian outrages are allowed to multiply and corrode the core values of our country, we can only wonder how much longer it'll take for fascism to creep right up to our front doors or our Twitter feeds. For a strongman, it's a logical progression.
At whatever point that may be, the tweeter in chief, finally in full authoritarian mode, would surely be asking in some form: "What are you gonna do about it, America!?!" A good question, but a little late after we've watched the rule of law melt away.
28
In a normal world, Miller, rightly, would be a nobody. But this is Trump’s world, so his obscene white nationalism is in the national news. It is embarrassing and heartbreaking that the United States executive branch is demeaning its citizenry in this manner.
38
It is impressive how a young man can harbor so much hatred in his mind and heart. As he gains power he is becoming dangerous. Indeed sinister, is a good appellate to this insecure balding man.
30
We see a habit now of members of Trump's cabinet thumbing their noses in front of Congress, flexing and making a snide mockery of the questioning.
Mr Mnuchin was the dishonorable brat today, throwing an icky boy's fit at Maxine Waters. Salesman Matt Whitaker deserves an honorable mention, lecturing members with a dozen times his service and experience, and refusing to respond to questions the law requires him to answer, while grinning. Nielsen was memorably a stone cold liar.
All in the tradition of Bret Kavanaugh, who ascended to the Supreme Court by lashing out with adolescent drunken rage while bawling in a manner he'd rehearsed with members of the president's team, in an ante chamber to the oval office.
The Trump presidency has been one long threat to take over. His minions sit in front of Congress, disobeying the law, laughing at it, are a fine representation of that.
Ms. Neilson and the rest of them need to be held accountable for any laws they have broken, including refusing to testify honorably and truthfully to Congress.
59
He is the scariest of them all.
12
Has SM ever had an MRI or CAT Scan on what is growing in that head of his? I am serious.
4
What I don't understand is the media's focus on Miller now. Now. Where have you been?
From the very beginning of trump's administration Miller was the Dark Lord. Only now we are focused on him so squarely?
Please, give me a break. He's been up to this wicked agenda from the beginning and it was rarely a focus. I'm disgusted.
25
Ms. Nielson deserved to be fired but Stephen Miller, not the president, has his fingerprints all over her ouster. Miller is the face of this administration and the GOP.
23
@silver vibes
Trump rarely does his own firing because he is a coward.(Remember the Comey firing?) He lets one or the other of his goon squad do it.
The media should shine its light on Mr Miller more frequently and in more depth. He has shown in the past that he cannot take the heat of scrutiny; he is like a bug found under an overturned rock. The swamp is overflowing.
48
Great writing. Maximum truth to power.
10
This isn't--and shouldn't be--about Stephen Miller. He is not the president. He may whisper in Donald Trump's ears all of the evil in his dark soul. But the final decisions do not belong to him. Stephen Miller is, as this piece says, the president's "consigliere," a counselor, for good or for ill.
Stephen Miller's biography is dotted with tales of rejection, clumsiness and awkwardness during his teenage years--and later. He appears as a grim, unsmiling soul who harbors small love for anyone outside of the small, mean Trump orbit. His Jewish forbears came from Russia; their emigration here should have been a lesson in (a) humility and (b) generosity, the latter of a foreign country that took them in despite their religion. Perhaps his narrow soul is incapable of introspection and a consideration of the sufferings of others; in this, he mirrors his boss. Had America denied them, what was the next best alternative? If there was one? Germany?
Stephen Millervis more Iago than Brutus; after all, Othello held onto shreds of decency even while he was being craftily suborned by his first lieutenant. The 45th president doesn't require anyone to show him the way to hate. It's an unfortunate byproduct of this barren administration that those who have the president's attention are far from honorable. It's a deep swamp and more vicious specimens may be descried far below the surface.
Stephen Miller is not alone.
38
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 Thank you, well said.
The Trump administration has been all about white nationalism from the moment he came down the escalator. Miller is merely the embodiment of this white supremacist point of view. It is alien to what has been true of America since its founding, as a harbor for the world's tired, hungry and poor. But when Trump launches the war with Iran at the end of 2019, and declares martial law and the 2020 elections canceled, we'll all know that we have a monarch in place and have to mount a revolution to remove him.
19
@Michael V. We will have an election. The revolution to eliminate the current huge tragedy will come at the ballot box. Register, Do your homework, Contribute, Vote. Dump Trump, Ditch Mitch. When that happens, Steven Miller will face a lifetime of unemployment.
Miller is indeed an excessively evil person, but he is not responsible here. Trump is the Decider, and he decided what he wanted done about immigrants a long time ago. Miller is just an assistant working directly for Trump, not a manipulator. He's no Svengali; he's at most a third rate Eichmann. Let us have a moment of lack of appreciation for all of Trump's other assistants in his evil work, at every level, especially in the work concerning immigration.
22
No one should have as much say and influence as Stephen Miller without having the approval of the congress. For him to have more power than a cabinet secretary is a discrace, and this should not be tolerated by the next secretary. He is a stain on this country, and his policies will harm this country for decades.
18
@Tom I said the same about Ben Rhodes. I guess what goes around comes around.
1
@Tom Blasiak
Don't forget Sean Hannity the unofficial member of the Trump cabinet.
Is anyone asking why illegal immigration was at an all time low less than a year ago and just prior to Trump/Miller's separation policies. I believe this is a manufactured crisis to gin up support with Trump's base base.
18
Isn’t doubling down on nativism the same thing as traveling to Florida to talk about intervening against Maduro in Venezuela? Isn’t this presidential electioneering meat-to-the-fearful White-base, meat-for-the anti-Castro Hispanic vote 101? We have months of months of this pandering ahead till 11/20.
What I pray for is a calm Democratic debater who can depict and dissect all the fear etc on which the Trump presidency is predicated. I would predict a rout, people are way to smart for this, except I have been wrong before. :)
6
Can't act alone? Why not, he has so far...and actually he's had the very active support of his entire party, their purchasers, and the entire Senate...prior to which he had the active and determined support of both houses of Congress. Held captive as they hold the nation captive for their own chosen (bought and paid for) few, it's a war and has been, as fought by the Republicans...as they continue to do. Miller's just the front man for the front man.
9
We are getting very close to a complete catastrophe at the southern border. It is frightening to think of what might happen next: tear gas attacks on a massive scale, live ammunition being fired into crowds of women and children, mass incarceration of asylum seekers.
It could happen here. Will it?
12
@Bevan Davies. That won’t happen. It would be unanimous world condemnation and catastrophic. This is what I have concluded having your same concern.
@Bevan Davies. Well, someone has to take action to protect the country.
@Bevan Davies
Ahh, yep.
Stephen Miller’s “fame” is fleeting, at best. It’s all down hill from here. May that moment come soon!
8
If they made a movie about Steven Miller he would be played by Vincent Price.
5
Well you got to give it to Stephen Miller. He has done more to back Trump into no win situations than anyone else. Sure he has had help but really after the debacle of the shutdown, the emergency declaration and the caravans, the “great” press over the purge, the ever changing costs of the wall, the lies about where the drugs are really coming through, you would think Trump would quit putting his finger in the electrical socket of immigration. Some people never learn the easy way. Fact is Trump and company are in a corner. Ha...it’s all their fault.
7
First family separation was ex-Attorney General Sessions' idea, then Secretary Nielsen was cast as the heartless implementer and now Machiavellian Mr Miller is behind the policy.
Actually its none of the above. This policy is Trump, Trump, Trump. Rather than being manipulated President Trump is the instigator of this harshness. Are the policies racist ? Yes. Does that make the President a racist ? Yes.
Coming from as liberal and cosmopolitan a world city as New York people give often the President's reactionary actions an undeserved benefit of the doubt. Surely he doesn't actually believe in them. His actions would be interpreted far more accurately by the media if they wrote their coverage as though he were previously a Real Estate developer from the deep South rather than New York City.
12
Finally! To read this piece brings some solace to those who know Miller to be the vicious, cold hearted, mean spirited, embittered person that he is. He truly raises fear in me that I've never known.
22
Strictly and ruthlessly enforcing the law is draconian then how does one explain millions of illegal migrants and those who have overstayed their visa permit currently dispersed in the country? Stephen Miller is not a vicious villain as this member of the Editorial board is trying to make him out to be.
Stephen Miller or Trump administration has not come in the way of a single applicant seeking legal entry of a visitor or a potential immigrant. All they are saying is just channel your entry through legal entry points and America will welcome you and settle you with kindness. Trump likes to see results of his efforts. Anything less makes him uncomfortable and it was evident that the shake up is an attempt to get better results. As I said yesterday Sec Neilsen did her best but that did not produce the optimal results. It is a complex issue and judges of the circuit courts are no help and the Trump administration is stuck with the laws and whatever precedence was set up by the Bush and Obama administrations.
Stephen Miller is doing the right thing with minimal support for his efforts to enforce the crooked laws with plenty of loop holes to gain entry through our porous borders with messy options to plug the pores and to properly channel asylum seekers.
8
Yeah, there’s nothing more American than banning people from entering the country strictly on the basis of their religion, then attacking the legitimacy of the court when that’s challenged. Solid analysis, Girlish.
1
@Kip from Scottsdale, Arizona. You make an outrageous and false accusation leveled against the Department of Homeland Security that America has banned people on the basis of religion. For the past 100 years including in the past 2 years millions of legal immigrants have settled in the USA without any discrimination against religion, race or national origin. I have had 2 Iranian colleagues and several Iranians I have met in Louisville, KY alone. I have taught medical students of Iranian origin but yes I have also heard stories blaming Trump for not allowing an Iranian uncle of someone they know. That is part of the extreme vetting that appropriately is done as a promise to the American people to make sure that none of those chanting to death to America is let in. Nothing to do with religion. Most Americans would Thanks Trump administration for going the extra mile to prevent terrorists or those who wish to harm Americans, any American from entering the USA and keeping America safe and secure.
There is zero evidence that there is discrimination based on religion that bans legal entry into the USA.
2
@Girish Kotwal. Thank you for standing up to this maelström of misplaced outrage.
1
We are all citizens. We are all accountable for the actions of the nation no matter who we voted for or whether we voted. We failed to elect a good president; we are all at fault. Let's fix our own failings and do better next time. Pointing fingers does little to help that effort.
5
Of course Nielsen’s resignation makes perfect sense. She’s one of a dwindling number of bureaucrats with outstanding integrity. About a year or two ago at this point, she said Congress needs to act to change the law and that it’s improper for the president to make an order for the agency to disobey the law. Obama did the same thing with child separation. Tell me why Congress is so dysfunctional that it can’t change the law and shifts the responsibility to the president?
3
Obama did not do the same thing with family separation!!! That is a lie! Stop lying! He separated families ONLY when the adults were in the commission of trafficking, or drug smuggling or some other serious crime!!!!! C’mon.
The policies are not 'vicious', they are rational and pro-American. I am glad we have a President who implements these policies.
13
@JackC5 If America is the land of opportunity and the beacon of hope as envisioned by the founders, as well as the fulfillment of dreams of freedom for my ancestors (and probably yours), then these policies are most decidedly anti-American.
And who is it that picks America's strawberries and cleans Americas's hotel bathrooms?
20
Not this American. Not rational by any measure.
1
If all undocumented immigrants that currently live in your city L.A would be deported, the city would come to a screeching halt. That is no joke as it is nearly 10 percent and they are an integral part of the city’s economy. You would beg for them to return and offer them citizenship.
1
Republicans like Stephen Miller promote the false idea that people allowed to stay in the U.S. until their asylum hearing (the pre-Trump policy) will disappear into thin air.
They use the insulting phrase “catch and release”, a term from fishing, to imply that migrants are as devoid of humanity as a school of swordfish, and that our nation is as vast and as deep and as difficult to search as the ocean.
The reality is quite different. When an asylum seeker presents at the border, he/she begins a digital and paper trail. Fingerprints, retinal scans, biographical details, and local contact information are just the beginning. The moment the person rents an apartment, signs up for utilities, enrolls kids in schools, or opens a bank account, there is an ever-growing set of locater data. That is precisely why there is a 99% check-in rate for migrants at immigration hearings.
Republicans are basing the new, draconian policies on irrational fear. Detaining people in prison rather than humanely allowing them to remain with relatives and friends is done solely for the optics. The Republicans use cages to display cruelty. This is a tactic of fascism and horrifying to see in the United States.
A competent President would not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on multiple photo op visits to the border. He would organize a meeting with the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and say, “You’re losing a lot of citizens. How can we help?
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@Heather. “A 99% check-in rate for migrants at immigration hearings”. Right. Actually, about 40% of removal orders are issued in abstentia. This is official: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1083096/download
Stop the propaganda. Check the facts.
@Heather Thank you. Spot on. This should give the NYT and all responsible media a place to focus and expand upon. The sooner the better.
Secretary Nielsen considers herself a good person.
It has been widely reported that Secretary Nielsen has informed the President, on occasion, that his proposed initiatives would be inadvisable and/or unconstitutional if he were to proceed.
When she, inevitably, makes these claims herself, she will be implicitly making the argument that she was providing needed "guard rails" to potential presidential overreach, and acting wisely on behalf of the American people.
Square that with the fact that Kirstjen Nielsen - of her own free will - signed an order that forcefully and needlessly removed children from the care of their parents, and permanently damaged many of those children.
Shame on her.
Shame on all of us.
33
Secretary Nielsen considers herself a good person.
It has been widely reported that Secretary Nielsen has informed the President, on occasion, that his proposed initiatives would be inadvisable and/or unconstitutional if he were to proceed.
When she, inevitably makes these claims herself, she will be implicitly making the argument that she was providing needed "guard rails" to potential presidential overreach, and acting wisely on behalf of the American people.
When this happen, remember that Kirstjen Nielsen - of her own free will - signed an order that forcefully and needlessly removed children from the care of their parents, and permanently damaged many of those children.
4
@ Mark “from the care of their parents”?!? Seriously? Parents are not providing care to their children when they haul them a thousand miles through dangerous and deplorable conditions only to try to then sneak them through barbed wires fencing or huddle in unfed and unsheltered masses waiting to ask for asylum.
In any State in this Union such actions on the part of parents would immediately result in Child Protective Services removing the child from the “care of their parents”. Immediately.
3
@William
Well, if Child Protective Services in the USA were in fact removing children from US-citizen parents because the parents were hauling their kids a thousand miles through dangerous and deplorable conditions and if they were really doing this immediately and without due process (i.e. obtaining a judicial determination if the removal of the child from his parents is really warranted and absolutely necessary for the child's welfare)
then I would think your Child Protective Services are just as ill-informed, cruel and incompetent as the agencies separating children of immigrants parents at your Southern border.
Because as any expert on child psychology would certainly tell you the removal of a child from his parents can inflict serious emotional damage on the child (especially to young children) which is why it should only be done under certain circumstances, to be established by a court in each case, and only if it's really in the child's best interest. Also, usually there are certain laws, statues and rules to follow in order to make sure the removal doesen't inflict harm on the child.
Luckily, I found out that Child Protection Services in the USA obviously aren't really as bad as your comment suggests, and (unlike immigration agencies) would never remove any child from his or her parents without due process. Maybe you want to inform yourself by reading the statues here: https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/best_interest.pdf
@William So they are supposed to just stay in their home countries and allow their children to starve to death or be ruthlessly murdered by gangs and cartels or die of illnesses easily treatable in places with medical access and functioning governments? You have literally NO idea what desperation and complete lack of resources might force you to consider doing in order to protect your family. Get over yourself.
Put Mr. Miller in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He'll see how hard it is to enact his ideas in the real world under existing laws and constitutional protections. And he'll stop whispering wild ideas in Trump's ear.
6
The interesting thing about the Trump-Miller relationship is how totally the president has surrendered his authority and voice to Mr. Miller. For a president known to brook no rival for the media’s and his base’s attention, for a man who must be the only focus of attention, to share the spotlight, to be beholden to Mr. Miller for shaping and, heaven forbid, touting his key role in shaping immigration policy is not something Mr. Trump will be able to tolerate for long. Mr. Miller’s days are numbered he just doesn’t know it yet. Sadly, the great harm he will have done to downtrodden migrants and to the great nation that is ours will take years to recover from.
9
@PMIGuy I think Miller's success is that he plays to Trump's fears and stokes his prejudices to fever pitch. Also, as has been stated before, Trump listens to the last person in the room and that appears to be Miller more often in the recent past.
8
@PMIGuy Does Stephen Miller remind anyone of Grima Wormtongue from LOTR?
2
"President Obama had child separation. I’m the one that stopped it."
That statement is about stopping Obama. The President portrays himself as a rescuer? At this time, the President and his little henchman want new leaders to implement policies that forego federal immigration judges as the interpreters of the law concerning threats to life.
The President wants policies and enforcement TO CREATE A RESULT -- that very few are granted asylum. The policies and enforcement must be tough enough to produce that desired result.
The President's expectation that his results-oriented decree will be judged as creating a legal standard for procedural dismissal of requests --- is delusional. The President describing himself as preventing child separation --- is delusional.
Many people want this nation's commitments to processing asylum seekers TO BE REDUCED to an approved number; and they want to ignore the need to properly address the systemic causes at the source countries. Instead of expecting federal agencies to aid, assist, and resolve, many people want us TO SIDESTEP our nation's commitments. These many people are Trump supporters. His administration balks at solutions; he lays blame at the desperate people; and that's fine with Trump supporters --- because dumping our national commitments, like a tantrum-throwing fake patriot, is what they really support.
Vote him out and the henchmen leave.
24
"But no matter how much of the administration’s immigration agenda Mr. Miller has been responsible for, it’s taken a village to make that vision a reality."
Let's examine that village. Egged on by Miller, Trump is removing the enablers who have drawn the line at breaking the law. What kind of people will replace them?
Miller has had two years and more to winnow the Homeland Security apparatus for people who agree with him that "the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned." People who would like to rise to the top and don't care how they do it.
Slot those kind of people into leadership positions, and you have set the scene for events that, supposedly, "can't happen here."
But they can happen, and once they start happening, it will be too late to stop the avalanche. The people who might have stopped it will have been rounded up by men and women with badges and guns. That's what has happened in other countries that have let the likes of Trump and Miller seize control.
It can happen here. Looking at the ongoing purge, it's hard not to think it's already happening.
83
We are no longer a republic. There is no entity, not the electorate, not the legislature, not the supreme court, and especially not the department of justice that has the will or the efficacy to remove, control, or even limit this president. He has fully siezed the reins of power.
While courts will continue to poke him in inconsequential ways and the congress will lodge a few petty complaints, Trump has largely assumed the powers of all three branches of government.
In January of 2021 Mr. Trump he will simply refuse to leave the White House regardless of November's results. There will be some outrage, and some tears, but mostly we will go back to staring at our devices and sending pointless raves to the NYT message board, powerless to do anything else.
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@The Observer
“Our enemies frown and our allies are smiling again. Things are great in America!”
By this I guess you mean our enemies that now frown are our longtime former allies across Europe and free countries like Australia and New Zealand.
Smiling area Russia and China.
40
Our "allies are smiling" because they are laughing at us. Or do you not remember Trump being the UN's punchline. They literally laughed at him.
46
@The Observer Our allies are smiling?
6
Where did all this hate come from with Miller? It's all sickening, and also considering that his family had immigrated here in the past.
287
@Birdygirl he was contrary to gain attention at first, then that attention went to his head as he realized how to convert it into power. what we now see is how corrupt and corrupted a figure he actually is, riding high on the shoulders of the complicit GOP.
25
@Birdygirl-I sense Miller, mentor Steve Bannon, and Alex Jones--have in common an experience somewhere in their past of being humiliated and possibly exposed (or seen) as a coward. As a result, they've moved to gain power however they can and have unleashed a revenge-porn-aggrieved-white-male-fantasy on the rest of us in the process. Like Trump and fellow enablers, they hold people outside their sphere of like-mindedness in contempt. They also need enemies and to demonize others to feel powerful. Underneath it all, they are pretty insecure and pathetic people. Sigh. Too bad so many of us have to pay for their sociopathy and arrested development.
5
@Birdygirl
He speaks hate and that is where the hate comes from.
1
Stephen Miller only reflects the more extreme views of Trump's base, which clings to the view that all immigrants, the brown ones, anyway, are rapists and terrorists. These views are distinctly anti-American and full of hate.
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@Peter ERIKSON
This is driven by the GOP to prevent new people from voting. GOP doesn’t care if people get killed or abused.
The GOP doesn’t believe in the future - they are scared of it. It’s not the sort of people who can or will lead, except by expediency.
12
It's true that it's far too simplistic to let Nielsen off the hook (or blame Miller) for cruelty at the border. Instead, we should be looking at Nationalism becoming policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Nazis used the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) to, "fight enemies of the Reich inside & outside the border of Germany." DHS "protects the United States within, at, and outside its borders from foreign or domestic threats."
The RSHA was responsible for intelligence gathering, criminal investigation, overseeing foreigners & monitoring public opinion. DHS is responsible for Cyber Security & Intelligence, which effectively provides information & can monitor public opinion. It's also responsible for Customs & Immigration.
Himmler led the RSHA from 1942 to 1943. This isn't just Miller's dream job; This is his dream, period. Unfortunately, as the GOP capitulates to Trump & his White Nationalist base in order to maintain power, they're turning a blind eye to the destruction Democracy, which will ultimately hurt them as well (later rather than sooner, but still nonetheless).
To loosely quote Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany, "First they came for the Socialists & I said nothing because I was not a Socialst. Then they came for homosexuals, but I said nothing, because I was not a homosexual. Then they came for the Jews & I said nothing, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me & there was no one left to stop them."
That's why Miller wants DHS.
248
@Ashley
You can twist and curl the hate to try hard to make it resemble being wise and protectionist but it is still hate and like it was in 1936 it will always be met with Repulsion. Miller in my opinion is hate and he does not deceive the wise.
23
@Ashley Yes, so well put. Everything happens one small step at a time.
21
@Ashley. If I'm still around when they come for Stephen Miller I'll be thrilled.
2
It is not at all inconceivable that Trump will set up concentration camps and imprison his enemies. I think back to my grandfather fleeing Germany, evading Gestapo arrest just barely, and I see that it could happen here. DHS under a lawless leader has the raw power that could enable mass arrests. If you read the comments by Trump's fanatical partisans on the Fox news site it is clear there are willing concentration camp guards ready for recruitment. There is real danger from Trump to the existence of the Republic.
424
@Federalist
While it seems preposterous, I’m not at all convinced that the damaged electorate of this country would resist such a policy. We can only remain a republic if the electorate is engaged enough to resist such attempts to undermine it. Unfortunately, people care more about their stock market earnings than they do about their liberties.
73
@Federalist It's pretty inconceivable. As a former military officer, I can guarantee you enough of the military and civilian members of the government would make sure this didn't happen. And as evil and ignorant as Trump is, it's important to remember the administration reversed course -- with some help from the courts -- when confronted by the outrage over their recent policy fumbles at the border. Take heart...join your local Indivisible-affiliated grassroots group...and fight. Remember that Trump's supporters are only about 35% of the total population.
56
I think people don’t know what to do. We feel helpless to do anything because it seems Trump and his henchmen are given free reign and protection by the Republicans to do whatever they want. I wish I knew what to do.
40
Of course. It has been evident for some time that the Republican "leadership" in Congress is complicit in the destruction of our country.
The Republicans in Congress enable Trump, who in turn enables Steven Miller, Fox News commentators, Sheldon Adelson, et alia.
The only real question is how far down they will drag us.
154
@Democracy / Plutocracy
As far down as the rest of us allow this to keep going without stepping up and saying No!
It was somewhat easier to attribute Trump's success to those those who value financial resources (I have other descriptors that can't be used for the likes of the Koch's), those who were downtrodden and wanted a new path, or those who hated the libbies and wanted to sock it to them.
All three are far more palatable than recognizing that his election had as much to do with the vicious underbelly of hate that now proudly strolls in the sun.
And I marvel that we allow it. A white nationalist is guiding our immigration policies. We have debased ourselves far more than his base ever could.
86
There is a striking resemblance to those good Germans of yesteryear but before accusing anyone of unadulterated evil, consider the possibilty that this is about votes and money. If an action is likely to garner votes or money, the folks in this administration will go for it. Right, wrong, moral, immoral are not even considerations. How does it look on Fox News? That's a big consideration.
25
Do not attribute to malice what can be easily attributed to incompetence. Our leader are luckily incompetent even in their malice.
The Trump Administration needs an Edward Snowden at or near the top of most federal agencies, DHS, DOJ for starters then we can move on to the EPA. Who is pretending to call this governance? What kind of talent is attracted to work in this Administration at this point?
18
Unfortunately , he probably can act alone.
7
Of course the responsibility for this regime lies with many more people than Stephen Miller. And putting aside the graft, the dishonesty, the direction of criminal activity by this "president", what is more horrifying is that he apparently has little trouble finding people who will order brown-skinned infants and children be put into cages. But it is not enough to call out Mr. Miller, or any other individual in the Trump administration, for that matter.
Who should be called out then? Trump voters. More than two years on, they love the vicious, hateful actions taken by him. They are thrilled to see Hispanic infants put into cages. They love that he endorses the rising number of hate crimes since he took office.
So we need to take the gloves off, now. Trump voters should all be ashamed of themselves. They have all had more than sufficient time to step away from Trump. That they have chosen not to speaks volumes. The fact is, we may all rail against Trump's appointees, but they are only where they are because of Trump voters, and their insatiable hatred of brown-skinned people. And they will never change.
Trump voters don't deserve our "reaching out". They haven't been hoodwinked. They are not hapless dupes who had no idea what Trump was capable of. Rather, they are just as willfully ignorant and bigoted as he is. And this is why they will never leave him. No Trump voter deserves the slightest respect or consideration now. They deserve only our contempt.
134
@Nicholas Rush
Exactly. I'm tired of the GOP saying that they, "want their party back." In March of 2019, Trump's approval rating among Republicans was 93% (USA Today). This is who they are. I wish they'd at least have the decency to stop lying about it.
104
@Ashley I have often thought that part of the Republican base does not have a clue about what some Republicans stand for or the Republican platform. For a portion of them, being able to put a Republican bumper sticker on their car brings an instant upper class feeling and a perception of increased social status.
10
@Nicholas Rush
Well, some are hapless dupes. I have to believe not all of them are intrinsically evil, and I can't help believing in the vast amount of stupidity all around us.
So enforcing the law is "vicious?"
Michelle Cottle maybe you want to live in the 3rd world but most Americans don't. The cost of living especially housing and taxes is already too high. So you want to allow millions and millions of people in the US to further drive up housing costs? And most of the the people invading our country are poor and uneducated. They will use more in services than they will ever pay for in taxes. No thanks.
11
Except that nearly all credible studies show that immigrants largely contribute to America society, not detract from it. They quite literally are the very essence of what it means to be an American.
19
@Reader In Wash, DC
If the middle class keeps shrinking, tax cuts continue for the wealthy and our elected reps make laws to benefit corporations and not individuals we will be a Third World Country. Millions and millions of people will not be granted asylum, and the poor don't drive up housing costs. Studies do not show immigrants use more in services that they pay in taxes. Your arguments are worn out and simply not true.
20
If you’re against uneducated people dragging the country down, what’s the rationale for allowing Trump’s base to live here?
23
Said before ... all have the same dark personality traits.
7
miller is looking more and more like czar Nicholas' Rasputin. it did not work out well for the czar.
25
@L'historien, Just the beard is missing.
Yesterday a New York Times online reader provided the best response I have seen to the likes of Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, all the Trump enablers, and every American who voted for Donald Trump. It bears repeating over and over: "The Trump stink never washes off."
226
"Widespread rot requires legions of enablers..."
Beyond the Miller, Trump, and the other enablers mentioned are rot as the author states. But there is a much larger rot that enables these despicable characters to exist. The Republican base that we see at his rallies. They're the real enablers.
80
We now have a two-man administration. How sad.
11
That photo. He always looks like he was photo-shopped as some evil over-lurker.
50
@Anne
And the thing is....But it’s not photoshopped! That evil look in his eyes is really there. No actor, while training and rehearsing for a horror movie would be able to achieve a look quite that cold and evil.
7
"Mr Miller's preferred approach .. is straight out of Ann Coulter's fever dreams." Have you any idea how vulgar this exuberant little jab of yours is? Have you any idea what it would do to the career of a male columnist who published it? Is there no reticence at all in your eminence now at this paper, to check the degeneracy of your excesses? I do not accept your fitness for publication.
2
"an immigrant-bashing, ethnonationalist platform"
Not immigrants. Illegal immigrants. Legal, law abiding immigrants as welcome in the USA as any other country on earth.
And ethnonationalist? Sigh. All opinions (and nearly all reporting) in the NYT come back to one thing.....racism.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, soon everything starts to look like a nail.
11
@Ami
1. Seeking asylum is not "illegal".
2. Mr Trump ran for office on a rhetorical campaign grounded in race-baiting and naked bigotry.
3. "Why can't we have more immigrants from countries like Norway?"
Heard enough?
98
@Ami
You weren't paying attention. No problem listen to anything they say going forward they are only getting more bold with each time they "get away" with this stuff.
13
How many more orbits around the toilet bowl does the Trump administration have to make before Mitch McConnell finally decides it's gotten too close to the sewer?
49
Mitch McConnell does not care about decency, the USA, or the law. He cares about power, power, and money. As long as Trump appoints conservative judges who will roll back civil rights for non-white men, give business and banks carte blanche to do anything that they desire, enact laws to give government control of women's reproductive organs right to privacy, continues to cut taxes for the wealthiest corporations, individuals, and families, Mitch McConnell will allow Trump's corruption, dismantlement of government, and cruelty. Trump exists because of Mitch McConnell and the amoral GOP.
19
@Skeptical Cynic-You mean the Mitch McConnell who eagerly accepted the lion share of $7.35 million offered to GOP campaigns by oligarchs linked to Putin? Who sat on his hands during the shutdown --despite his home state Kentucky facing an opioid crisis and black lung epidemic? The one who has shown, over and over again, he is complicit in Trump's recklessness and criminality? https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/15/putins-proxies-helped-funnel-millions-gop-campaigns
Kentucky is Second Most Dependent State on Federal Money http://www.wkyufm.org/post/kentucky-second-most-dependent-state-federal-money#stream/0
2
Didn’t we hear the line about “ just following orders” somewhere before?
Oh, yes- Nuremberg 1945-47.
Jeez, GOP gang, you’re on thin ice.
143
@Fred Lifsitz
A soldier not following orders could be executed. What do the Trump people have to lose?
5
@R. Littlejohn some of them are going to jail.
1
Bluntly, Miller is disgusting.
160
Why doesn't anyone know his middle name? Kind of weird.
4
Ms. Cottle is right that Trump advisers, Republican legislators, party apparatchiks, and media personalities deserve blame. But she doesn't go far enough. The ICE or other federal employees who grabbed babies from their mothers' arms should be condemned, if not prosecuted for kidnapping. We prosecuted concentration camp guards, after all, not just top Nazis.
29
Correct. Blaming Miller is foolish. Many voters want to curtail illegal immigration and tighten the restrictions on amnesty.
Right or wrong, many voters don't believe amnesty should be given for domestic or gang violence, poverty etc.
Most do believe that amnesty should be eligible if a person can prove that the government they are citizens of is specifically going to persecute them if they remain or return to that nation.
The fact that many can get amnesty in Mexico if that was their legitimate purpose for fleeing their home combined with data that indicates that when denied amnesty, most return home rather than apply for amnesty in Mexico indicates to some voters that the many if not most are migrating for economic reasons.
Democrats will have a difficult time with this issue as they don't seem to have a plan to address the issue. Similar to the GOP problems on health care.
I'm not sure how many immigrants they want to allow, who they think should get amnesty or how they would deal with the 100,000 people showing up on the border every month. All I get from them is how bad the migrants are being treated, and how it's Trump's fault.....Until they get a plan Trump will hammer than on this issue as they will hammer him on healthcare!
23
@Lindsey Reese
Precisely. The Democratic Party needs to be speaking out in a clear and consistent way - just exactly where it stands on immigration. Calling the wall "immoral" and leaving it at that gives President Trump all the ammunition he needs to "stand tall" on the issue with his supporters. Similarly, candidates need to speak in no uncertain terms about how to address our vast income inequality, need to be for some version of healthcare for all, and how to reduce the bank-breaking military/"defense" budget- ending unwinnable, incessant, immoral foreign wars. Dancing around the issues with sweeping rhetoric is a sure loser.
5
Please continue to expose Miller —-it may take a village of hate but he is the one who has Trump’s ear. I believe we are hearing loud echos from the 1930s and Germany. Time for true Americans to show their outrage and the 4th estate must lead the way. Let’s read more of Timothy Snyder and please print, as often as you can, those great words of Pastor Martin Niemoller admonishing all to speak out before “they” come for us.
68
I have read several news articles that Miller’s family has disowned him because of his outlandish stance on immigration. Their reason is that Miller comes from a family background of immigrants and that the family hates him as does the rest the of us.
306
@Grandpa
don't most Americans come from a family background of immigrants? all except for native Americans and look what this nation did to them.
32
@Grandpa
With all of my heart, I loved your post.
18
@Grandpa Thank you - you did your research - wish more would take the time to do that. Millers family certainly not supportive - in fact disgusted.
13
Miller just tells Trump what he wants to hear - and that's why he gets listened to. I promise you, Miller's the one telling Trump that "nobody’s ever done a better job than (you're) doing as president'. A sycophant advising a narcissist is a dangerous combination.
232
Usually the rots starts at the head, and this is true for the Trump administration. But the rot in the Trump administration also starts at the tail, in the middle, and everywhere in-between. The whole fish stinks, scale by scale, and no one who works for or supports Donald Trump can escape the stench. And this is no fish story.
42
They're all surrogates; all "willing accomplices;" all eagerly implementing the orders of the "malignant narcissist" in the Oval Office. And all of them will be eventually cast aside by a mentally ill man who lacks empathy and embraces the darkness of the worst qualities of humanity--bigotry, callousness, dishonesty, fear, greed, hate, intolerance, licentiousness, meanness, pettiness, revengeful, spiteful, traitorous, vindictive, wanton and zealous. This is the evil that Stephen Miller seeks to enact and that will eventually destroy him.
20
"... And yet. The portrait of the 33-year-old policy adviser as a figure of singular evil is both overly simplistic and counterproductive. Sure, the guy is a force for darkness, easing the president ever further into nativism. But no matter how much of the administration’s immigration agenda Mr. Miller has been responsible for, it’s taken a village to make that vision a reality. …"
Agreed: one guy can't be Mephistopheles, it takes an entire hell's angels. Somebody is rounding up asylum seekers, separating and sending toddlers to cages. Somebody is paying the taxes the finance this with little concern (aka US citizens)….
This is one instance when it is appropriate to ignore
Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"; that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will …
Yes, Hitler was evil, but somebody had to run the trains.
7
Can any leader be as viscious as a propaganda outlet?
The Prez has a crew he feels will help him get the country where it needs to go.
The NY Times' political operators had a great chance to make things their way during the Obama exercise in indolence, but when a hundred thousand people a month cross our border, we are in a situation no Democrat could handle - and even our socialists know that.
Listen to Bernie Sanders for once. Even h admits that there's no way the U.S. can survive with open borders - no matter WHAT Uncle George's Centers for American Progress insist.
4
My understanding is that this creep is a speech writer, is that not right? Are we still talking about the fact that the charlatan-in-chief surrounds himself with the dregs of American policy thinking? Does anyone really expect Trump go suddenly take the high road and get the best and brightest and most intellectually honest people to give him advice and write his speeches? Bottom line is that Trump was elected by the mindless minions that make up his coterie of American supporters and this Miller is a by-product of all that slime. Reading another Op Ed telling me what I've already known for years now about Trump's inner circle is, to put it mildly, NOT enlightening.
15
@ManhattanWilliam
What we need is more time by Miller in front of the press (instead of throwing bombs in the backfield at teh White House, because those few times he has stepped up to the podium and started spewing ideology.. it's been a complete train wreck for the Administration.
So while I think we are over exposed to Trump in the press, we are under exposed to Miller in the press. I would like him to have plenty of press time to self-implode with his arrogant pronouncements.
31
Could we perhaps name Mr Miller Ambassador to Brunei?
I feel certain he would find a kindred soul in the Sultan. And, we would all breathe a sigh of relief.
40
AFAIK no one has alleged that Mr Miller "acted alone". Which makes me wonder what the point of this article really is?
Every policy in the government is initiated by an order from a superior to a subordinate. The members of the administration and people in the Civil Service enact their role in implementing that policy. They each have varying amounts of leeway in how they do their part.
Each of these people in the process has a name and an official amount of responsibility attached to their job description. There is also personal responsibility. This comes into play when legal questions of whether or not the policy itself was legal or morally objectionable or fell into the category of something no person should do. No one is allowed to follow illegal orders or enact illegal policy. You generally know someone has a guilty mind when they come up with reasons for why something obviously wrong is legal and right.
8
@magicisnotreal
The author is simply reminding readers that the big bad boogey man being blamed for this weeks implosion of the Department of Homeland Security is simply the the injector of chaos via whispers into Trumps ears. He has no direct power, but he has incredible indirect power as long as he has Trumps ear.
5
Could not agree more. There are very few Republicans in Washington that aren't complicit.
262
Stephen Miller – like Ivanka Trump and Kellyanne Conway – have been able hang in because they have ZERO deliverables. If any of these three are competent they should take a difficult assignment – please! – and show they can succeed through innovation and good management of subordinates and peers. Again, these three have no management responsibilities.
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@Todd Katz
It is much worse than that.
They are trying to make the fantasy of a movie like America where you just say things and they are instantly real and accomplished come true. They seem to really believe it can.
16
One gets the sense in observing photos of Mr. Miller that he derives pleasure in inflicting such cruel policy. Neither he, nor Trump, have any business in government — such is their lack of empathy or adherence to the rule of law. It harkens back to another dark moment in the world's history, circa 1930s-40s.
Vote against this.
It is un-American, deeply damaging and disturbing.
816
@Brunella - We can readily expect that as journalists dig into Mr. Miller's past, his family and upbringing, that Netflix may have it's next big docu-drama and Mr. Miller will find himself in prison.
42
@Brunella
"I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country."
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351
Miller's family came from a shtetl in Imperial Russia. They were impoverished and persecuted and would have perished in the Holocaust if our borders had been closed to them in 1900.
My grandparents though not Jewish were similarly impoverished and left the Austro-Hungarian empire at the same time. My impoverished great-great grandfather left famine-ravaged Ireland in the 1840s.
So many millions of Americans share the same kinds of stories in their history.
Miller is a disgrace, a shanda, as they say in Yiddish.
66
@Brunella absolutely, nicely said, thanks. If I may add:
Americans have to grow-up and stop being so peevish, narrow-minded, prone to emotion over reason.
They must stop allowing themselves and their officials to go for the drama and entertainment value of it all and rather insist on some real work and measured accomplishments.
Their criteria for success must go beyond things that really are happenstance or things that tickle their fancy today; things that are of fleeting value if of any positive value really.
They have to stop playing the victim to the most vulnerable and powerless while ignoring their own culpability and the real threats the plutocrats, autocrats, and demagogues pose from within.
They have to recognize and accept the World she is a-changing and shrinking.
That their Country's place in it is no longer assured technically.
That the edge American had and must continue to have is being on the vanguard re: modernity, social innovation, higher values, equality, liberty, tolerance, acceptance of young new blood.
They must insist that their officials - those that run their Nation - be competent
Ant committed to TRUTH, to TRUE American Egalitarian Values,
To working for ALL the People, for Modernity and modern Freedom, for Posterity (e,g. Environment, Education, Infrastructure, Innovation).
Right now it looks like we are on a race to get to a ".. dark moment in the world's history, circa 1930s-40s"
We better turn this ship around and soon!
6
I don't think it takes a village with this president.
All Steve had to do is jump up on Trumps shoulder and start squealing and jumping up and down and Trump will simply wave his hand, sign and executive order, and completely disregard settled law where immigrants seeking asylum are concerned.
It would be more accurate to say it takes a village to keep Steve in his cage and appeal to Trump to not follow the darkest inner voices of his emotional compulsions.
15
@Chuck
He disregarded settled law because he had no idea it existed. That's what comes when a nation entrusts its government to someone whose diploma was purchased by his father, and then that same father allowed his elitist child to play with money and fail time after time, often hurting real people in the process. What has happened to our values that we allowed this to happen? And Trumps supports still support him even though everything he has done of substance will harm them.
74
I don't tweet but where is the #EnoughIsEnough movement?
56
Only following orders. Seem to remember hearing this back in 1945. Wasn’t a valid defense then and certainly isn’t one now.
443
@Indy1 or some reason, Stephen Miller reminds me of Eichmann. Or maybe most people don’t even know who he is.
12
Steve Miller is scary.
116
@Liz
“saurian” might be a better word for mr miller.
16
Steven Miller is a tool of Steve Bannon and a self affirmed white nationalist. They own the White House while the Trump family run a criminal enterprise out of the West Wing. When is Impeachment going to be on the table? When is enough enough?
528
@H.A. Hyde
When is an impeachment going to happen? Have Congressional Republicans given you any evidence that they will support an impeachment? The House can surely indict. But the Senate will never convict and remove. Without removal, indictment looks like sour grapes. We're going into 2020. Democrats cannot afford to look like they are eating sour grapes. Get over it. The time to worry about impeachment was in the 2018 elections. If we had succeeded in taking a large enough majority in the Senate, things would be very different today. But we didn't. Painful lesson. One that I hope we remember going into 2020. To repair the damage this presidency has wrought, we need to control the government for a few cycles.
79
@H.A. Hyde enough is enough when McConnell says so.
27
I will settle for the 25th Amendment. After Trump’s move to endow Steven Miller with National Security, let us hope this is the limit. Hit the streets, man. I have.
58