Miller praised Calvin Coolidge and immigration policies based in racism

The email messages show Miller’s great admiration of President Calvin Coolidge, who signed the restrictionist Immigration Act of 1924, which lasted as the basis of American immigration policy until major reforms in the 1960s. (Coolidge also held racist views that were inextricably tied to his immigration policy, declaring: “Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.”)

In April 2015, Miller joked about new additions to the immigration museum at Ellis Island: “Something tells me there is not a Calvin Coolidge exhibit.”

In an email from June 2015, Miller linked to an article about the Immigrant Heritage Month and wrote: “This would seem a good opportunity to remind people about the heritage established by Calvin Coolidge, which covers four decades of the 20th century.”

Coolidge’s immigration policy has also been championed at Fox. The network’s website published a column defending his immigration restrictions by professor and author Barry Strauss in November 2016, a couple of weeks after Trump was elected, declaring that Coolidge “was not a racist, at least not by the standards of the day.” And just this past July, Fox contributor Cal Thomas ran a syndicated column titled “The bold solution we may need to fix our broken immigration system,” praising Coolidge’s record for having immigration “reduced to a trickle.”

In an email thread in August 2015, another then-Sessions aide, Garrett Murch, wrote: “Mark Levin just said there should be no immigration for several years. Not just cut the number down from the current 1 million green cards per year. For assimilation purposes.”

Miller praised the idea from the right-wing talk show host and tied it back to the former president: “Like Coolidge did. Kellyanne Conway poll says that is exactly what most Americans want after 40 years of non-stop record arrivals.”

Levin now has his own weekend TV show on Fox News on which he talked about Democrats allegedly using immigration to take over the country politically: “For the left, it’s about power, politics, taking red border states, making them purple, and eventually blue. And you know what? They’re succeeding.”