The controversy and heated debate over child separation at the southern border continues to rage. But one name in the Trump Administration keeps popping up when the immigration debate flames up; Stephen Miller.
McKay Coppins had been working up a profile on Miller for The Atlantic anyway, but the recent child separation controversy brought even more focus on the presidents Senior Advisor.
In Miller’s view of the electoral landscape, the president is winning anytime the country is focused on immigration—polls and bad headlines be damned. (This explains why Miller is, according to Politico, leading an effort within the administration to plan additional crackdowns on immigrants in the months leading up to the midterm elections.)
Speaking to The New York Times, Miller framed his theory this way: “You have one party that’s in favor of open borders, and you have one party that wants to secure the border. And all day long the American people are going to side with the party that wants to secure the border. And not by a little bit. Not 55–45. 60–40. 70–30. 80–20. I’m talking 90–10 on that.”
Of course, if the goal were simply to draw voters’ attention to the border, there are plenty of ways to do it that are less controversial (not to mention, less cruel) than ripping young children from the arms of asylum seekers and sticking them in dystopian-looking detention centers. But for Miller, the public outrage and anger elicited by policies like forced family separation are a feature, not a bug.
A seasoned conservative troll, Miller told me during our interview that he has often found value in generating what he calls “constructive controversy—with the purpose of enlightenment.” This belief traces back to the snowflake-melting and lib-triggering of his youth. As a conservative teen growing up in Santa Monica, he wrote op-eds comparing his liberal classmates to terrorists and musing that Osama Bin Laden would fit in at his high school. In college, he coordinated an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” These efforts were not calibrated for persuasion; they were designed to agitate. And now that he’s in the White House, he is deploying similar tactics.
Stephen Miller’s highest profile moment so far might well be getting his mike turned off during a bizarre interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union back in January. Writing about it at the time, it was clear Miller was happy to play his role in the media circus as attack dog against any and all Trump critics.
The purpose and the promoted reason for Stephen Miller’s appearance was to get his, and by default Trump’s, comments on the release of the Wolff Fire and Fury book. The 1A issue was to the fallout and public pillaring of Steve Bannon. Miller, having been perceived as a Bannon guy in the past, came forth publicly to add his stab to the public execution of the condemned Bannon’s political future. This was the capping of several days of Trump administration officials professing their loyalty to Trump through condemning of the loathsome Bannon.
Stephen Miller, at 32 years of age, has quickly risen to a high position by any standard of measure, his resume being fairly thin. Before his role in the Trump Campaign and then the White House, the Duke graduate’s highest profile job was communications director for now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Such a background, or lack thereof, leads to speculation that Miller might be where he is based more on his true believer status than actual expertise. Using media invites to go into assault mode on behalf of Trump will do little to dissuade that opinion.
And as the NY Times reports, much of the rancor of the last few days leaves Miller and his like-minded associates not only unmoved, but thrilled that all is going according to plan.
But it was Mr. Trump who pulled Mr. Miller and Mr. Sessions — and their views about immigration — out of the political shadows. In January 2015, when few were watching, Mr. Sessions wrote a 23-page memo that predicted that the next president would most likely be a Republican who spoke to the working class about how immigrants had stolen their jobs.
Most mainstream politicians ignored the memo, but its contents influenced Mr. Trump. At a raucous 2015 rally in Mobile, Ala., he sensed the power of the immigration issue as a crowd of 30,000 supporters roared with approval at his promise to build a wall across the southern border and crack down on illegal immigration.
By then Mr. Sessions and Mr. Miller were the architects of the immigration agenda of the long-shot Trump campaign. In 2016, Mr. Sessions endorsed Mr. Trump for president — his first ever endorsement of a candidate in a primary — and Mr. Miller did as well.
Both men have something else in common: They are largely unfazed by criticism or bad press.Mr. Sessions is known for proudly holding opinions thought to be retrograde. Under his high school yearbook photo was the caption: “He is a host of debaters in himself.” While serving as Alabama’s attorney general, he supported reviving chain gangs of volunteer inmates and tighter identification requirements for Alabama voters.
Mr. Miller is similarly immune to critiques from establishment Republicans, who often view his immigration positions as far out of the mainstream and politically dangerous. In the recent interview, Mr. Miller dismissed as ignorant the hand-wringing of Republicans about the family separation controversy.
McKay Coppins in his piece reminds us we have seen this purposeful strategy before:
Take the travel ban, for example. During Trump’s first week in office, Miller worked with Steve Bannon to craft an executive order banning travel to the United States from seven majority-Muslim countries. Trump signed the order on a Friday afternoon, unleashing chaos at airports across the country, complete with mass protests, wall-to-wall media coverage, and a slew of legal challenges. Afterward, Bannon reportedly boasted that they had enacted the measure on a weekend “so the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.”
Whether it is immigration debates, behind the scenes advocacy for his policies, or public fights with CNN and the rest of the media, it is very clear Stephen Miller and like-minded people realize that as long as they can enrage their followers they can keep them engaged, and the engaged follower is a very useful pawn. The Trumpian true-believer brand of populism is mostly easily controlled by continually giving it an object to hate and attack. Using outrage to draw an overreaction from opponents then becomes self-fulfilling prophecy of “See, those people really do hate us”; for Stephen Miller, immigration checks many boxes for engagement by enragement politics.
Hatred, especially that which is cynically promoted over hot button policy debates, is the tried and tested method of controlling groups of people to do what you want for people like Stephen Miller. However this current episode of outrage theater concludes, there will be more to come.
What say you? Login and comment.
I don’t know whether to think of Stephen Miller as Joseph Goebbels or Salacious Crumb.Report
yesReport
I can’t see any picture of him without thinking ‘Pee-Wee Herman cosplaying a Goebbels’Report
Miller seems more like the Eichmann type. The mastermind behind the scenes. His love of outrage is definitely in the mold Goebbels. I’m ashamed that a fellow Jew can be creating such a shanda in front of the goyim.Report
I don’t know how much shanda there can be, when the goyim of this Administration made shanda a prerequisite for membership.
Its more like the cantina at Mos Eisely.Report
The focus on Miller leaves other people off the hook. I somehow doubt Miller is the only one that supports this — Sessions is being unusually full-throated in his support, and Kelly’s past statements are pretty indicative of where he lies.Report
Miller is definitely not the only one supporting it, but he seems to be the prime mover of a lot of it, and especially the tone and roll out of it. There is quite a bit out there that the original “crying child” pic that came out and started a lot of the current controversy was pushed out by Miller himself. Plenty of blame to go around, but Miller is a good place to start.Report
Sigh. This week a conservative friend started linking to pieces in The Federalist about liberal outrage and how it was such a terrible thing.
I’m not going to link to it, you can find it by searching “federalist liberal outrage”. Meanwhile Miller and his kind troll, and stoke counter-outrage.
Miller isn’t the only one who thinks that whenever the people are thinking immigration, they are winning. Bannon thinks that, too.
I keep reminding myself that this happened in CA 20 years ago, and the result was that CA is now deep blue. In spite of it being solidly red in the 80s.Report
People foolishly thought that Bannon’s firing would signal a modulation by Trump, but that was laughable as long as Miller was in place. McMay’s linked piece does a good job going through the history of how Miller-through Sessions-brought the immigration as banner to fight under to Trump in the first place.
I agree with your first point, I am beyond done with this childish notion that outrage by any side somehow justifies the actions and responses of the other.Report
I cannot imagine this not killing the GOP’s already poor numbers among Hispanics. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they end up voting as reliably Democratic as blacks do, and for pretty much the same reason.
If you can look at this mess (the act, the defenses, and ye gods the comments from the average supporter of this mess!) and think “Oh, well, they wouldn’t do this to the good brown people — you know, citizens and legal immigrants” you’re deluded.
It’s not about illegal immigration — you notice this isn’t on the Canadian border, or that ICE isn’t grabbing people on expired visas — this is pretty much an extension of now-pardoned Arapio’s outright crusade against the non-white.
And the GOP’s response to this has been terrifying. It might be Miller’s plan or Trump’s orders doing this, but the GOP is completely complicit in this.Report
There was a recent piece in Slate claiming that the admin is stepping up effort to de-naturalize people who have been here for years but have some sort of infraction.Report
They could start with Melania, who IIRC overstayed her visa.
I mean if you’re serious about it, you should show no one is above the law.Report
Whats really stupid is that most of these people are waiver eligible. So they get denaturalized, put in removal proceedings, apply for a 237 waiver, keep their green card, and re-naturalize five years later.Report
At this point we need to just concede that Trump, Miller, Sessions, and the rest are true believers in their cause. They aren’t going to back down or change policy in the face of mounting public pressure. Miller has a near lifetime of trolling liberals that stretches back to middle or high school according to reporters. Trump’s views on race are well known and even older.
Today Trump tweeted about how immigrants are an “infestation.” This is precariously close to “nits cause lice” as an argument and very dangerous and very racist.
So it is hard for me to say that people shouldn’t be outraged by this and the best call for action is decorum and restraint. This is the rhetoric and actions of fascism that they are using. Along with the revelation yesterday that ICE officials say they are taking the kids “for a bath” before taking them away.
I also don’t see the 11th dimensional chess that Miller is allegedly playing.
Semi-OT but I’ve been looking at photos of Trump. I find his gestures and expressions repulsive but they clearly have a dark charisma and connection to his supporters. He has a very jocular “amirite?” kind of pose when discussing immigration and using flame-throwing language.Report
We’re living in the Guillermo Del Toro horror version of the Back To The Future sequel where Biff Tannen found the almanac.Report
The United Methodist Church brought charges yesterday against Jeff Sessions for violation of church law. Per the article, the max punishment is explusion, but basically, historically, this procedure has never gone beyong a talking to by the regional authority for the church.Report
This seems like a thing the admin really won’t like nor did that calculate for. I mean i’m sure they are fine with aiming the poo faucet at Methodists in theory but as a practical matter i’m not sure that will work.
I’m also thinking of some solid “method” puns but i’ll keep them to myself.Report
https://youtu.be/AAwCJfWHdqwReport
But no Irish!Report
Sessions is Methodist?!? I would never have guessed. They are pretty big-tent, but people like Sessions tend not to like being in big tents.Report
The part of Trump’s NFIB speech today where he talks about judges gives away the game.
starts at about 18 minutes
“I don’t want judges, I want border security. I don’t want to try people, I don’t want people coming in”
edit: also a riff on judges at about 15:15 “we have to have a real border, not judges”Report
(the Ted Cruz immigration proposal is to double the number of immigration judges from 375 to 750. So who the heck knows where Trump is getting his ‘thousands of judges’ thing from)
(I mean, it’s likely the usual place, but there’s usually some penumbra of some policy that floated from the far corners of the media-political verse that his utterances, though twisted, are based on)Report
It’s pretty obvious that Trump clearly thought the President was a dictator, and is currently very mad this isn’t the case.
The loving way he sucks up to dictators, praises them, talks about how he wishes America was like that is a big clue. it was also pretty clear way back during the primary that the man believed all the conspiracy theories about Obama’s dictatorial actions, and his whining about the DoJ makes it obvious he believed he should be using it (and the FBI) as his own thugs.
So this is just another tantrum the President is throwing because he’s not a dictator — although he is highlighting a number of places the American system has relied on “President being sane and interested in public reaction” rather than “laws”.Report
Thing is, the POTUS has incredible powers, but Trump is too much of a thug to wild them properly.Report
What this should also put to rest, is the idea that there is a legitimate political position by the Trump Administration and its supporters.
That is, there is no intent here to make America a better place for all, or to pursue the founding principles.
Instead this is pure blood and soil nationalism, ethnic tribalism run amok.Report
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/06/sociopath-gets-appropriate-response
This is satisfyingReport
So who’s the first supposed classical liberal who will Tweet about how this is the end of civility and proves the Left is Just as Bad?Report
The silver lining is that it is becoming obvious to all but the most oblivious and/or disingenuous that we are past the point of civility. Sure, some people responded to Trump looking at self-professed Nazis and seeing a lot of good people with “well, I don’t personally agree, but that is a valid position to take.” But now these people have to respond to open child abuse the same way. America has a long history of having more sympathy for Nazis that we openly admitted. But child abuse is a tougher sell.
Also, this may (and certainly should) push those people who imagine themselves to be above the fray into voting Democrat in the fall.Report