Alex Wong/Getty Images

White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller has the charm of Hannibal Lector and the ideology of a neo-Nazi who prefers to sit in business class.




While Miller’s name was dropped throughout the presidential campaign, it was only last weekend that the other big racist in the White House really made his presence felt after making the rounds on the various Sunday talk shows (an often lily-white platform that ought to have made him feel right at home, but I digress). And oh, did he make an impression as he switched back and forth from “It rubs the white supremacy on its skin” to teases of young Anakin Skywalker shortly after pledging allegiance to Darth Sidious.



In many ways, Miller was your typical 45 surrogate. He lied like hell about voter fraud. Likewise, Miller refused to be truthful about the travel ban being a ban specifically targeting Muslims seeking to enter the United States. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that Miller also wears an ill-fitting suit, which increasingly appears to be a requirement for any man working for that White House.




Excuse me, any man that works for that monster.



Of all Miller’s appearances, though, the one that stood out most, and what separates him from his colleagues, was his segment on CBS’ Face the Nation. There, Miller bumped his pale chest high into the whitest cloud he could find in the sky to let us, the viewing public, know one thing: You do not question Colby-Jack Führer. Miller was asked about the disastrous executive order, which he is largely responsible for writing and subsequently fumbling.

Still, when asked about what he has learned from this experience, Miller decided to go the authoritarian route rather than any apologetic one, answering:

Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean, this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is—is—is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.


It’s been all too apparent that Colby-Jack Führer has strongman dreams, and he and his team of deplorables are longing to bite the heads off of anyone who stands in their way as they pursue absolute power. However, the more you read about Miller, the more frightening it is to consider that this is a person who writes policy and serves the president.

In Univision’s “How White House Advisor Stephen Miller Went From Pestering Hispanic Students to Designing Trump’s Immigration Policy,” Fernando Peinado reports:

In his third year at the school, the 16-year-old Miller wrote a letter to The Lookout, a local publication, about his negative impression of Hispanic students and the use of Spanish in the United States. “When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school,” Miller wrote. “Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own,” he added. “As politically correct as this may be, it demeans the immigrant population as incompetent, and makes a mockery of the American ideal of personal accomplishment.”

In that article, Miller also complained about his school’s celebration of Cinco de Mayo, the existence of a gay club and a visit by a Muslim leader.


Additionally, there is an exhausting list of Miller’s bold displays of homophobia, xenophobia and sexism.



In “Stephen Miller: A Key Engineer for Trump’s ‘America First’ Agenda,” Washington Post writer Rosalind S. Helderman reveals:

Cultural-identity issues appeared to particularly animate Miller. In a column in his high school newspaper, titled “A Time to Kill,” he urged violent response to radical Islamists. “We have all heard about how peaceful and benign the Islamic religion is, but no matter how many times you say that, it cannot change the fact that millions of radical Muslims would celebrate your death for the simple reason that you are Christian, Jewish or American,” Miller wrote. Ari Rosmarin, a civil rights lawyer who edited the student newspaper at time, recalled that Miller was especially critical of a Mexican American student group. “I think he’s got a very sharp understanding of what words and issues will poke and provoke progressives, because he came up around it and really cut his teeth picking these fights that had low stakes but high offense,” Rosmarin said.


As for how he behaved at Duke University, well, this administration official doesn’t mince words (via the News & Observer):

At Duke, Miller never seemed to have a problem with disagreements. He sought them out, and enjoyed the fight, according to those who knew him. “He’s the most sanctimonious student I think I ever encountered,” said John Burness, Duke’s former senior vice president of public affairs and government relations. “He seemed to be absolutely sure of his own views and the correctness of them, and seemed to assume that if you were in disagreement with him, there was something malevolent or stupid about your thinking. Incredibly intolerant.”


At Duke, Miller became friends with white supremacist Richard Spencer, and they both belonged to the Duke Conservative Union. When asked about Miller’s White House appointment last December, Spencer told Mother Jones: “Stephen is a highly competent and tough individual. So I have no doubt that he will do a great job.”

Miller looks like he grew up skinning alive any black-colored pet he could find, so this ringing endorsement makes sense.




What’s most frightening, though, is that Miller does not operate as a Twitter egg or Reddit user. Nor is he just some online columnist with free rein to be vile and racist. Miller has real power now.



In the now prophetic New Yorker piece “President Trump’s First Term,” published last fall, Evan Osos wrote:

To understand whom Trump trusts to put policy vision into practice, I contacted Stephen Miller, his national director of policy, who serves as a fiery warmup speaker at Trump rallies. Miller, who is thirty-one, worked for Michelle Bachmann, of Minnesota, and, later, for Senator Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, a prominent Republican critic of free-trade deals and illegal immigration. Miller has been described by Politico as “a deeply unsettling figure, even to many in his own party,” in part because of his writings in college and high school. While attending Duke University, Miller accused the poet Maya Angelou of “racial paranoia” and described a student organization as a “radical national Hispanic group that believes in racial superiority.” Miller asked me to speak to several of Trump’s advisers on the economy and trade.


The more one reads about Stephen Miller, the more terrifying he becomes. And as easy as it is to poke fun at the people in this administration to help us cope with what’s happening, the likes of Miller awaken extreme fear. You know these people are bigots. They have never disguised it.



Still, there is a blatancy and smugness in Miller that’s disarming. If he is going to be a liar, he should not be on television. But keeping him from television will not negate that he serves as an adviser to the president and helps write policy. Miller will take his lifelong disdain for all things “other” and legislate his revenge. And as of now, the only hope we have of getting rid of him is Joe Scarborough making sense to 45 through his MSNBC show Morning Joe.


How terrifying.

