Many are expressing surprise that Donald Trump replaced Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff. Frankly, hearing surprise from those who closely follow Trump is a bit astonishing. Others of us who are paying attention see this as the exact kind of thing that Donald Trump would do. History is replete with examples of this sort of behavior. Too many political pundits talked of Trump moderating how he acts, being admonished and accepting the failures of MAGA and its rejection in the November 3 election. Accepting failure is not in the Trump DNA. Ignoring reality is. And his response has been seen before, many times before. Attack, attack, attack, lie, then attack again. And this is exactly who Stephen Miller is.

To see where this started we have to jump in the “way back” machine and consider the two biggest influences in Donald Trump’s life: his father and Roy Cohn. I wrote about his connection with Cohn and Cohn’s influence over Donald during the first Trump presidency. We can’t put Roy Cohn on the short list of most despicable people in world history, Adolph Hitler and the architects of the holocaust own that list. But in U.S. history? Roy is on the list. So is Donald.

You can read the details of the relationship in my posting from March 2017. I’ll summarize them here:

• Never admit you are wrong
• Lie when the facts are against you
• Always, always, always attack.

And here we are with Stephen Miller, a lap dog who attacks, who upholds these standards. Consider some of the things Stephen Miller has said:

• After Alex Pretti was murdered, shot in the back while face down on the pavement, Miller said Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin” who had “tried to murder federal agents.”
• He apparently thinks that we are a country that is being “conquered” by immigrants coming into this country
• With CNN’s Jake Tapper: “You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” Apparently he’s never heard of John Adams, a key person in the founding of our country and author of the Massachusetts State Constitution: “A government of laws, and not of men”.

• “The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said.

  “So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

  Yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. But now? We are not at war unless we consider the war that Trump, Miller, and ICE are waging on Black and Brown people. Armies invade. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, do not.

• He’s advocated for separating families accused of violating immigration laws. We’ve seen children taken from their parents, kept in cages.
• Birthright citizenship became part of the United States Constitution with passage of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War. The text is absolutely clear and direct: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The intent was to recognize that those formerly enslaved were citizens of the United States. Yet Miller disagrees. He believes that allowing non-white people to be part of this country is diluting the “purity” (a Nazi word, at least in this context) of a white nation: “This is absolutely a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic,” he told Fox News Channel in June. “If your ruling requires you to suicide your civilization, your reading of the Constitution is wrong.”
• His comments about Democrats is, well, to quote Tim Walz, “weird”: “The Democrat Party does not fight for, care about or represent American citizens,” he said. “It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang bangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists.” Miller added: “The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

All of these quotes are from the article linked to in the first bullet. There’s a lot more hate that’s come out of his mouth. Covering that will require a book, not a blog posting.

Please continue to bask in the joys of the BLUE TSUNAMI, but also be warned: the worst is yet to come. Miller and Trump have more than two additional years to continue their attempt to “purify” America. (word chosen intentionally, their means are less vicious, but their intent is the same as Nazis). Trump, surprisingly accepted the results of the election. His actions make clear that’s all he accepted. There is nothing to show anything that suggests he accepts what the elections mean. His actions show the opposite.

Stay aware. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Be prepared to act. Reach out and become active in organizations that support immigrants and that stand against hate. Contribute to organizations like The ACLU and LDF. This is a fight of ideas, in the streets, and in the courts.

Finally, if you want to whiten your teeth? Go for it. Try to “purify” and make the country whiter?

Resist

The Ugliness is the Hope, but only if we embrace the rage and act.

Resist. Persist. Oppose. Propose. Be the opposition with a proposition.

Be the Pebble