Stephen Miller has worked alongside President Donald Trump for a long time, even while other, similarly thinking aides departed, and he appears to be staying right where he is feeding virulently racist ideology to the president following the release of emails showing him freely citing extremists like the white nationalists behind the website VDARE. After the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published details of his email correspondences with former Breitbart writer Katie McHugh, Miller’s allies began criticizing SPLC instead of engaging with the facts that — no matter what they say about him now — Miller has a now amply documented history of pushing white nationalism.
Deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley came up with the outlandish line that those concerned with the contents of Miller’s emails are displaying anti-Semitism — which is just an utterly baseless accusation with no correspondence to the actual reality of the situation. It’s on the same level as Kellyanne Conway suggesting that those taking issue with her ardent defense of the president’s belligerence are displaying sexism.
Gidley said:
‘I work with Stephen. I know Stephen. He loves this country and hates bigotry in all forms – and it deeply concerns me as to why so many on the left consistently attack Jewish members of this Administration.’
The White House added the accusation that the SPLC is a “discredited, debunked” organization, pointing to a settlement they paid after accusing someone of being an anti-Muslim activist.
The Daily Beast reports that a senior White House official shared:
‘Stephen is not going anywhere. The president has his back.’
Gidley’s melodramatic moralizing does not change the fact that Miller is on record criticizing policies like Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections for people affected by a natural disaster in Mexico, and, now that he’s in the Trump administration, the president’s team has sought to dramatically restrict TPS protections. As if he was just trying to make his racist intentions as abundantly clear as possible, while discussing Hurricane Dorian’s torrential impact on the Bahamas, Trump even made up that there was a danger of dangerous individuals coming to the United States if the Trump team helped struggling Bahamians.
Despite the utter lack of concern with any of those in the Trump administration over the emails that were revealed, numerous concerned figures outside the administration have been pushing for Miller to go. During the time he’s already gotten to spend working with the president of the United States, he’s helped develop and push punitive, pointless policies like the infamous Muslim ban and the also infamous separation of families arriving at the southern U.S. border.
Prominent progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) noted:
‘Each day we allow a white nationalist to be in charge of US immigration policy is a day where thousands of children & families lives are in danger.’
She also started an online petition that people can sign onto to support getting Miller out of the White House — although it’s unlikely that the president’s team will pay much attention to their concerns. The virulently antagonistic immigration policy that Miller has pushed is one of many fronts on which Democrats can battle the Trump administration’s belligerence heading into 2020.
